Ahhhhhhhhh! That was a sigh of relief. It was the sound of me de-stressing, relaxing, and switching off from the last 3 months of work. I’ve been on holidays for a week and have another week to go and it is definitely worth it.

I spent Christmas with my family in Hervey Bay. My days were spent watching TV, playing Eve:Online and generally ignoring the world. My nights were spent drinking with friends, eating great food with my family and, again, ignoring the world.

There is a specific joy in knowing that 14 days must pass before I go back to work. It reminds you as you go to sleep that you needn’t set your alarm, whispers to you in the mornings that you can go back to sleep for another hour or two. If there is something that needs doing, it can wait until tomorrow, or next week. No rush, no stress, no worries.

Christmas morning in our families’ house is a subdued affair. There is no tree, no decorations, no 6am present unwrapping. In fact, I have not wrapped a present in years. We hand each other our presents knowing that wrapping and extra decoration in no way improves the intent of the gift.

This year my Mum bought me art. That’s right, I, Tony Peaker, am now an art owner. It’s a great painting called “In the eye of the storm”. It’s mostly black and dark with a man grasping the edge of the canvas, stretched out horizontally in the face of the wind and rain. When I look at it I see myself in my most stressful times and know that I just have to hang on for one more day, because the storm will pass.

I’m tired, stressed and pissed off. I haven’t slept more than 4 hours a night in the last week and a half. I’m waking up every morning feeling like death warmed over.

Work isn’t helping. Every day I go in to deal with clients who can’t get their shit together enough to tell me everything that they need for their show. Or, they ring to make a meeting with me, and then don’t answer their phones or the messages that I leave when I try to return their calls.

The office staff still ring me at 8am on my days off. They apologise first, and then ask me questions that they should already know the answers to, leaving me wondering why I even bother.

I feel like I want to stand in the centre of the foyer at the theatre and scream obscenities. Not at anything specific, just a long list of expletives that could be applied to any of the issues that I have to deal with on any given day.

I took the day off today, because if I turned up to work I think I would have lost it completely. For the first time in 2 years, I couldn’t face going in to do my job today. I love my job, I really do. I love doing sound, I love making an event come together without a hitch. But I couldn’t face it.

All day I have been watching my Scrubs DVD’s. That show is almost always guaranteed to cheer me up. Today it just reminded me that I am alone. Ever heard the saying that you feel “alone in a crowd”? That’s me right now. Work isn’t enough to fill the gaps. It doesn’t matter how many people I see on a daily basis. I miss having true conversations about real subjects instead of mindless smalltalk or work.

Two days off in a row. A luxury in my line of work. So, I spent last night drinking with friends who are down here working on the U2 concert in Brisbane. I got to bed around 3am, looking forward to a nice long sleep in this morning.

7:15am - the trainee from work rings to check what time he needs to come in to work today. I ask him if he checked his voicemail for the message telling him not to come in today. He says he has no credit on his phone so I get pissed at him and hang up.

7:21am - had a smoke and went back to bed

9:06am - office girl from work rings, apologises for calling me on my day off. My brain says, “Well why the FUCK are you calling me then?” Someone from Council needs a portable stage for an event at 6:30am on Saturday morning. I tell her all my crew are working from 10am to midnight on Saturday and there is no way I am calling them in at 5am to lug 4 stage modules to a cemetery in the middle of nowhere, for a 30min ceremony, and then have them work all day.

9:15am - had another smoke and went back to bed.

9:30am - it’s now too freaking hot to sleep so I get up and lie out on the couch and watch TV all day. A few beers, some nice food for lunch (Reheated lasagne), and a good fan and my day is improving. Now I can look forward to another night of beer and bourbon and tomorrow I am definitely sleeping in.