Frittering

It's all so horribly imperfect. Today I went into school feeling marginally less sleep-deprived than last Wednesday. I saw my young client, who seemed also to be marginally less sleep deprived than last Wednesday. Then I met my colleague who is the welfare and medical person in school, and a teacher (who looked young enough to be a student) to discuss a girl they want me to work with. Then I met the girl, just briefly, so she'll know who I am next week when she comes for her first session. Late in the proceedings, the young teacher remembered that the girl's year will be away on a trip in two weeks' time, and therefore she will have precisely one session with me before the Easter holidays. My brain whirred, trying to process this information, and decide what to do about it. Far from therapeutic to have a single session, then a break. I heard myself say well, it's not ideal, but we don't live in an ideal world, do we? The kind of putting-a-brave-face-on-it, compromise-filled statement I find myself making more and more in this setting. I came home. Part of me thought I should just have had the girl come for a first session then and there. But she was terribly sad, quiet and withdrawn-feeling, and I think being rushed wouldn't suit her. We do what we can.

This sleep thing is a puzzle. Not clearly, consciously nervous in a major way about the next day, I still spiral into a gut-clenching place of panic in anticipation of something about what the next day will bring. Or not bring. The best outcome is when, as last night, I can manage the panic enough to get some sleep around it. Fitful, broken sleep, each awakening a return to the familiar dread in the stomach. But sleep nonetheless. I know when I've slept because I wake up with a dream, hold onto it like a trophy. The tiredness at this time of day varies nonetheless, and is oddly sometimes worse when I've had a little more sleep, better when I've had (as last Friday) next to none. No rhyme or reason. But the weariness carries a burden of misery and despair I have to work hard to keep in perspective.

In and out of work, of being a working person. A few hours here and there not really enough to get into the swing of anything. A morning as a professional, then back home to my indolent unemployed life. And, as I've mentioned, tired. I eat a hot cross bun, answer an email, write this, stare out of the window. Feel there is probably something I ought to be doing. Contemplate a nap. A walk. Rereading the Census collector's handbook. Getting out my notebook.

On an entirely unequivocally positive note, we have booked a week's holiday in June. We'll stay in a cottage close to the beach in a tiny Northumbrian village. I am so grateful and excited. L gets her state pension in May and has decided to dedicate the first few weeks' money to this ineffable plan.