My body has officially caught on to the fact that in about two weeks I�ll be on holiday.

My mind has not yet caught on to this, which is a very good thing given the amount of work I have to do and the ability of my brain to shut down entirely the minute a break is in sight.

And for that reason I refuse to add up how many days I have off over Christmas, even for the purposes of this entry, but I suspect it�s around ten.

As you may have deduced, I am tired. I officially hit the wall yesterday morning when for the first time in perhaps a year I had to rely on my secondary, very loudly beeping, alarm clock to wake me up. I usually wake up to the 7am news on the radio. But I have my little travel alarm clock set for a few minutes after the news ends as a back-up. It came out of an irrational fear of the alarm not going off during a black-out � a fear that was born out of starting a full-time job for the first time � and became a good habit for when I fell back asleep during the news and needed something to kick me out of bed. As was often the case.

Yesterday that happened for the first time in a long time. And once I got up I was still struggling. Of course, I didn�t go to bed early last night as I should have, but I didn�t go out either � skipped last night�s Christmas drinks where no one would miss me, because I can�t skip tonight�s or tomorrow night�s. This morning, still tired. I slept the night through but I can feel bags forming under my sore eyes. And my shoulders are very tight.

My body is ready for some down-time.

My mind is aware that (a) while mid-week is busy I am actually currently free of weekend plans so I can sleep then; and (b) there is a list of two dozen individual work items currently in front of me that need to be completed this week, so the body better just suck it up and allow the brain to get on with it.

Which, in the four hours between writing the above and writing this bit, it has. I even managed to stay awake through yet another meeting, this one being of value in the long term but absolutely unnecessary for right now, so staying awake would have been an effort at the best of times. And so far I�ve only resorted to 600ml of diet coke and two cups of tea. I can almost guarantee that won�t be the end of the caffeine for the day though, as tonight I�m due to meet several people at a Christmas piss-up of the free booze kind. And tomorrow night the same again.

So it�s best to pretend that there�s no holiday waiting in the wings, and just focus, as is usual, on the fact that Saturday is not that far away.

Oh, and the Melbourne-centric blog I�m contributing to is now live, so go check it out.