I had my 3rd appointment with my nutrition consultant today. I told her about how the stress of my job was affecting me, and she said I may have to give some thought as to whether it's the right job for me.

She says the stress makes my body generate too much adrenalin, which in turn sends my blood sugar level all out of control. On top of that, I told her that at weekends I'm so exhausted that I feel no good for anything, and then I sometimes get miserable because I just stay in and not do much.

I told her about something which happened a couple of weeks ago. I'd had a pretty full-on stressful Friday. I finished late, exhausted, and then on top of that, I had to work all day Saturday to help with the shop's stock take. By Monday I felt like I hadn't had enough rest, and I started to feel quite spaced out, like nothing made any sense, like I wasn't quite sure what was real and what was in my head. I also started hearing my name being said. She showed me a medical chart which showed that excessive adrenalin can cause perception problems. She said that if it happens again then I'm putting myself in real danger.

She said that the way I was feeling at weekends was my body's way of telling me that I'm burning myself out, that's it's too much. The thing is, driving takes a lot of concentration. You try driving a van for 8 hours a day, five day a week! And on top of that, all the heavy boxes of shopping I have to shift about, it means that by the end of the week I'm exhausted both mentally AND physically.

I said that I have no trouble getting to sleep, but sometimes I wake up too early. Apparantly this is my adrenal glands working overtime due to the stress.

She advised me to give some serious thought as to whether it's the right job for me, or whether I could reduce my hours and job share with somebody else. When I applied for this job, there was a space on the form to mention any health issues. I left it blank, because I thought I'd be able to manage. I didn't think it would be an issue. Little did I realise just how much stress can affect me.

But the funny thing is, I do actually enjoy the job, so this whole thing is really confusing. Something I keep telling people is, "I really like my job, but it sucks the very life out of me!"

And what I do is still not good enough, because they complain that I'm too slow or I get this and that wrong or they complain about my driving skills or whatever. I get held up in rush hour traffic, I get delayed when other stores mess me about and put things in stupid places, and sometimes there's just not enough hours in the day, it's like I'm being pushed and pulled in too many directions at once but all the blame comes down to me. I'm doing 85 deleveries a week, but still I'm told it needs to be at least 100, and I'm told that things will get busier just before Christmas. Maybe this job would be better split between two part-time people. Sometimes it's just too much to do this every day for 5 days running.

And they only pay me for 39 hours when what I do is more like 45, because my hours are 10 till 7 which includes an hour of unpaid lunch time, but on really busy days I barely get to stop!

I like it because I never get time to get bored, and time just flies past really quickly. But am I gonna just burn myself out if I keep going at this pace?!