Work it, sista!

To keep me in the pink of health (steady supply of sneakers, bounty of books, dozens of DVDs, tons of toys and tunes et al), I earn my keep as a copywriter. Every morning, I stumble into the office with half-baked ideas and spend the rest of the day writing, debating, sexing them up proper. And don't leave until carpal tunnel syndrome kicks in - usually no earlier than 8pm.

I've been a workaholic for as long as I can remember. Juggling an internship and full-time studies at 18, I spent no more than 4 hours a day on sleep. That was the time when I picked up smoking as a means of calming my nerves and keeping me awake.

Bad habits followed me through to my work life. And the record for my longest 'shift' stands at 31 hours - when we were producing a dining privileges catalogue in the summer of '03.

I've since slowed down. Thanks in part to a long year of hormone therapy for my kidneys. But mostly because I realised that work + after-work drinks + more work + chain smoking does not equal a life.

When I dived back into work after a 3-week holiday in the States 3 weeks ago, I was literally buried in briefs. As if the volume of work wasn't bad enough, they had to smack us with explosives masquerading as jobs - I still have nightmares about the death of my career if the campaign is not a success.

Day after day, I spent every waking hour thinking about and writing ads for soya milk, credit cards and what-have-yous. Headlines and taglines crept into my dreams. And I felt like my life was one long, bad TV commercial.

This week off work was very much needed. And I'd been looking forward to it with much glee - constantly stopping myself from going squee over it.

But now that I've got all this time in my hand, I feel a certain restlessness. I've been going from website to website, proofreading chunks of text and sending site owners emails detailing typos et al. And holy wow! Never have I felt a greater need to write about the mundane.

Which explains why this is here. Heh.