Been so tired and absentminded it's starting to scare me.

These days I'm practically rushing home after work as soon as I can, so that I can catch a nap before I do whatever it is I need to do for the night. I can hardly stay awake anymore. I'm even threatening to fall asleep at the wheel. I've taken to talking to myself as an attempt to keep myself lucid. I fall asleep while marking, while surfing the net and several times while sitting at my desk at work. I get headaches and feel dizzy just from trying so hard to stay awake. I don't know what's wrong with me!

And then today, I started to feel like I'm literally losing my brains. As it is, I'm already absentminded(by nature?), even my students say I have STM (short term memory), but things seem to get worse by the day. Today, after about 3 hours of lessons, I felt thirsty. So I reached out for my bottle, only to find that it was nowhere in sight! And I had no idea where I left it! And then I realised that my stationery pouch was missing too. ARRRGH! So off I went, wasting precious time searching for the things I sorely needed for the next lesson, things other normal people would probably not lose as frequently as I did. Had to back track, going to all the places I had gone in the 3 lessons earlier. It took time, but thank God I did find them eventually. In the general office, sitting on the desk of the clerk, one storey below the staffroom. She was patiently waiting for me to come and reclaim my property. Waiting with the patience that came with familiarity and frequency. I had done that a number of times before.

My form class was with me last year as well. By now, we know one another pretty well. They know I can't draw for nuts, that I hate noise, that when I want something out of them I usually get it because I can be irritatingly naggy and persistent, that I have an extremely bad memory, and that when they interrupt me while I'm giving instructions I'm very likely to forget what I intended to say. At the beginning of each lesson, when I issue instructions and reminders, I almost always get a barrage of problems and excuses thrown at me from all directions, each accompanied with an earnest face and/or plausible (that's what they think anyway) reason for their non-appearance of work. Sometimes, for example, they say they didn't do the piece of work because they didn't GET the worksheet in the first place. And since I often don't have the cow sense to anticipate that they would give that excuse, most times I don't have the piece of assignment at hand, ready to give out to them. So I would tell them to follow me to the staffroom to get it at the end of the lesson. But guess what? I would, 90% of the time, forget to do so. And so would they! (I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt that they're NOT 'forgetting' on purpose) Now it gets to the point where I tell them blatantly that I would forget, but I expect them to remind me because it is their responsibility to make sure their work has been handed up. That it is not MY responsibility to chase them for work. I'm not a loanshark. And most of them dutifully remind me at the beginning, AND end of the lesson. And then follow me back to the staffroom for whatever it is. Heh. One of my students had to chase me for almost an entire week for money to buy the class tee-shirt. I simply kept FORGETTING to bring the money up to the classroom! Don't know what's wrong with me...

Also, in my exhaustion, I'm suddenly aware that I've reached a stage where I shi(4) er(2) bu(4) jian(4). Today I was supposed to meet G at cityhall's robinson's. Robinson's has a few entrances. Think 3 on the ground level? One facing the outside of the building, one facing the center of the building and another near the escalators going down to the mrt. I was looking for the latter. Was walking down that particular short stretch of shops along there, on the way to the mrt. And I missed it completely! And for some strange reason, I assumed that since I didn't see it, it must have been blocked up or moved! So off I went to look for another entrance. And this was when I bumped into G. I looked back down the corridor, after telling G that the Robinson's entrance near the mrt was no longer there, and suddenly there the Robinson's entrance was! Gee...it felt like someone cast a spell on me! How could I have just walked past it without noticing such a big hallway leading in?? I must be blind.

Many times things occur to me in the day. Things I thought of sharing. About funny/weird/interesting/happy/sad/indignant situations or events, or just about life in general. As I see it. And then, when I get to a computer, I simply don't remember anymore what it was I wanted to talk/share about. So disappointing.

Is this just part of getting older? Or is there something really wrong with me?? Sigh