‘Eugh’ I sighed ‘I don’t have time for this.’

I say these words everyday, several times a day. For the purposes of this blog, I counted that I’d said this 7 times yesterday. 

Let me give you some context, I have a big job covering several time zones across Europe and North America. I am almost always on calls with colleagues, have a never-ending mountain of work to do, and an overflowing inbox. On top of this, as you know by now, I’m also a full time carer to my 98 year old grandmother. My days (and nights) are a constant juggling act of different priorities. I realise that I am lucky in that I am still able to work, I can do most of my work remotely, most carers don’t have that luxury in the UK.

But all this comes at a cost. I don’t have time to eat most days, sleep is elusive, I am always rushing from one thing to the next, I don’t have time to do anything properly, to think, to cook, to take a shower, to write this blog, forget going out, or doing anything remotely fun. Essentially, I don’t have time to live. I exist, that’s all I have time for. At 35, the burden of my caring responsibilities have cost me everything apart from my job.

Here’s an example of what I dealt with this week, I had been volunteered by my boss to present to my colleagues (the company I work for is huge so this represented a significant amount of people)- she told me on Monday afternoon UK time and the presentation slot was 48 hours’ time, Wednesday afternoon. I was mostly on back-to-back on calls until then, had several other deadlines to meet before I delivered this presentation. Plus I had to take grandma to a doctor ‘s appointment on Wednesday morning (the GP’s surgery had cancelled and rescheduled 3 times so I was determined we were going),all this on top of all the daily caring tasks such as cooking, cleaning, intimate care, entertaining etc.

When did I do my power point slides for the presentation? I did them on Tuesday night after grandma had gone to bed at around, I tried to get my exhausted brain to focus on what I wanted to say, and how I wanted to say it. And that only brought us to Wednesday. 

Why didn’t I tell my boss that I had too much on, you may well be thinking? Because I don’t want her to think I can’t handle my responsibilities, historically not a good career move. I can (sort of) handle them, I just do it in my own way. I also refuse to let my current caring situation affect my job prospects, I’m ambitious and I don’t see why that should be curtailed because I also have other (unfair) responsibilities.

That’s the thing about working when you’re an unpaid carer, you have to be careful about sharing too much with colleagues. They most likely won’t be able to relate, or think my responsibilities make me less good at my job or say the usual platitudes that infuriates us carers – invariably a version of ‘you should look after yourself’.

It angers me that I’m forced to live in permanent exhaustion because social care is woefully lacking in the UK. If you can keep working, you’re verging on burn out and if you can’t, you might get a measly £76 a week in Carer’s Allowance to do the job our taxes should pay for, and you’re more or less forced into poverty. Either way, there is no help.

Right- I’d love to keep writing but I don’t have time!