So tired

If my surname was Prescott, I'd be known as Two Jobs.

I am shattered. My current typical day unfolds as follows:

- up at 6, feed cat, brew up, shower, dress, put face on, do any chores like emptying the kitchen bin/cat tray or putting the dustbin out, take meds, make toast, flick through overnight emails, skim headlines of at least one decent newspaper...

- 8, yell "oh fuck", grab coat/bus pass/phone/bag/, lock up and take a brisk walk to the bus stop.

- 8.15, get on bus, read Twitterfeed on my phone, dip into Facebook and use an app to skim more paper headlines.

- 8.40, arrive at work, boot up computer, head to canteen to get Very Large Coffee, return 15 minutes later to discover PC is still trying to load itself. Spend next 8 hours working my socks off.

- 17.00, leave work, get bus home.

- 17.45, home, where I feed the cat then start Job no. ", ie, my freelance business.

I'm currently spending at least 3 hours every week night just maintaining the business. I know I receive a lot of emails every day and I've made estimates of the total in the past. Being out all day and coming home to frighteningly full inboxes brings home just how much mail I get. I'm probably averaging 150 a day at the moment. Most of those are unwanted press releases, but I still need to sift through them. Then there's digests of posts from various useful email groups I signed up to on topics of interest. Of the rest maybe only 3 or 4 will be actual offers of freelance work.

Then there's my RSS feed - again, working from home this is something I dip into at convenient moments. Now, I get home and 200 items wait to be read. Obviously I'm not reading all of them - some feeds I'll just hit "mark all as read" to get the total down.

By the time I've done that plus logged into a couple of work forums to keep apace with freelance colleagues and just gossip a bit, cooked some food, watched an hour's TV and done any other chores, it's 10 or 11pm and I'm dead on my feet. Last week, I was supposed to be at 3 events after work but cancelled as I was too tired and domestic stuff had priority.

And there was no rest at the weekend. I had a major copywriting job on, with a very attached deadline. It's the one that pays all my bills every month and therefore must be done. But it meant I had to cancel a planned trip to the cinema and another optional social engagement. I spent the entire weekend writing and researching, finally mailing the job back to the client at 11pm, along with my invoice. Then I fell into bed.

It's been 3 weeks since I started juggling 2 jobs and I am dead on my feet. My eyeballs felt like they'd been sandpapered when I awoke this morning and I struggled to concentrate in the office. And tomorrow morning I'm working in another city, so I'll need to get even earlier - at 5 - and won't be home till 7.30 in the evening.

How I'll manage this for another 10 weeks I have no idea. Something's going to give...