Who needs a concert when you could be working a 15-hour day instead?!

Over the past two days I've worked about 30 hours. While fighting a cold. I've got only 2 days to finish three weeks worth of projects before I have to travel. I'm exhausted. Beyond exhausted. I feel numb. Emotionally. Physically. Spiritually. Numb. So numb it hurts to my core, and then goes numb again. The only thing I can feel is the shooting pain in my neck that right now is making it impossible to turn my head to the right. While driving home I turned to look over my right shoulder to change lanes and nearly got into an accident when the pain made my eyes go blurry. I'm falling apart.

I'm so disappointed with myself. Tonight marked the second time in the last 6 months that I choose to give up an after work personal social outing (no, not a date) because of work. If I can't find a way to balance work and home, I'm never going to survive another year (let alone another 5) at work. Maybe it's time to explore what else is out there. Who am I kidding, I don't have time to. I think the problem is that I have a hard time saying "no" to assignments. I honestly believe that saying no would kill my career options (yeah, I'm in one of those situations). So I just take on the work, knock it out, nearly kill myself in the process, and rinse and repeat. It's just a fucked up situation. A fucked up cycle. Since I can't expect the other parts of the equation to change, it's up to me to change. Which is pretty much their expectation anyway. How the hell did I make it 5 years? Oh yeah, employee stock plan. I've only got myself to blame.