Anyone ever struggled with brain fog?

Had a technical interview with AWS on Wednesday. Woke up Thursday with the flu. Thanks, body, good to know the long tradition of sickness following completion of highly anticipated task is alive and well. Had to reschedule interviews and hold off on scheduling other interviews. (Damn it!)

To protect my repos from my brain on brain fog, anything I’ve done the past few days have been on branches titled “fever” or some variant thereof (“fever1”, “fever2” when there were two approaches I was trying).

I’m in a high-stress work situation where the organization is way too reliant on me to maintain day-to-day operations. We’re working on hiring a second person for my role, but it’s likely to take six months to find someone and get them on board.

And I’m afraid that I’m burning out now. I’m tired all the time and grumpy. Worse, in the last couple weeks I seem to be losing the ability to think. I’ll read an email and be unable to make sense of the words, or unable to figure out what to do with it – it’s just a blank white fog in my brain where I should have words and ideas and next steps. My productivity is less than half what it should be, and I’m horribly embarrassed and ashamed of myself.

I’m taking sick days and leaving work early when I can, which helps a bit, but not enough. I’m also doing all the recommended self-care stuff – diet, sleep, exercise. I’m scheduling a doctor’s appointment for next week.

I have a very good boss, which is the only reason I haven’t said screw it all and bought a one-way plane ticket to Tahiti. (I hear it’s a magical place.) Any thoughts on how to approach this with him? Under normal circumstances I’d try to arrange for some vacation time, but I’m afraid a week or two of rest isn’t going to fix the problem, just delay it a while. Any substantial amount of time off is going to really hurt my department. They may need to bring in someone to cover for me, which would be very expensive. I’m afraid it’d destroy my reputation as someone who can be relied on. What options do I have? What should I be doing next?

If I could just stop screening things up at work, that’d be greeeeeaaaaat.

Seriously, I’m in the worst brain fog of my life these past 6 months. I feel like I’m on the edge of dementia. The stuff that used to come naturally to me just feels foreign and incomprehensible. My judgment is so flawed right now.

!rant felt like a zombie all of last week and today, damn this brain fog. All I want to do is sleep lol. Had to revise my code countless times

How to get instant motivation and lazer focus on my coding? Do you know any trick? I know that brain fog requires a healthier lifestyle, but believe me i do a lot of that ( yoga, hikings, arts). I want to be able to grind on the computer like ten years ago, or find energy like playing rocket league ( which happens in one moment). I seek for a dirty hack, bene gesserit style.