6d ago
54 and genuinely cannot work out whether I'm burning out or whether this is perimenopause or whether those two things are even separate anymore. I've been in this job fifteen years. I know it inside out. And yet last Thursday I sat in a quarterly review and I could not retrieve the word "procurement". Just... gone. Sat there nodding while my brain frantically searched the filing cabinet and came back empty. Eventually said "the buying side of things" like a person who has never worked in an office before. I've started keeping a notes doc open in every meeting, partly to actually record things, partly because writing slows me down enough that I don't lose the thread of what I was saying mid-sentence. It's helping a tiny bit. Or maybe I'm just coping better at hiding it, hard to say. The thing I keep turning over is this: I've also been working ridiculous hours for about two years, my sleep is a mess, and I've got two teenagers who treat the house like a hotel. Any one of those things could explain the fog. But something about this feels different from normal tiredness. Sharper somehow. More like a gap than a blur. I've got a GP appointment in a few weeks and I want to go in with something useful to say rather than just "I feel a bit dim at work lately". Does anyone have examples of how they described the cognitive stuff to their doctor in a way that was actually taken seriously? I've heard so many stories of being fobbed off and I'd rather go in prepared. Also started eating a proper lunch at my desk instead of just grazing on whatever's in the kitchen. No idea if it's doing anything yet but the 3pm crash has been marginally less catastrophic this week so I'm noting it. Anyone else in this limbo of not knowing what's causing what? x