To work graveyard shifts day in and day out is a difficult task, and one I relish being done with once it has passed me by, though only the goddess knows when that will be. While I am - and have always been - a night-owl of sorts, it’s become increasingly difficult for me to reconcile my inner cicardian rhythm to the earth’s cycles to the shifts I work. Everything changes when you begin sleeping through the day and working through the night, from sleep to meals to socialization to shopping. It’s almost like living in another world, or at least on another plane of reality.

I work from midnight until eight in the morning. I typically sleep anywhere from 8:30-10am until 5-6pm. Today, when I woke up at 5:30pm, it was just growing dark. A month ago, it would have already been dark for almost a half an hour. Today, when I woke, it was February 19th. By the time I settled down with my tea at work, it was February 20th. I live every day split in half and straddling the line. Every day is two days, and sometimes, it feels like it, too. My ‘last night’ was really your ‘today’, and somtimes my ‘tonight’ was your last night, and my ‘tomorrow’ is actually your ‘day after tomorrow’, or, depending on the time, it could very well be your ‘today’. See how confusing this is? It confuses me, too. Today is now Thursday, February 20th, and at eight am, “tomorrow” will still be February 20th. That’s because I might still be thinking it’s “today, February 19th”, but it’s not, not anymore. And “tomorrow” on February 20th, at, say, eleven pm, I might look at the calender and think to myself: “Gosh, it’s Friday already [because it almost IS Friday, if Friday actually starts at midnight, which, according to my work schedule, it does], and tomorrow [meaning Saturday], I have to clean house!” But then people are confused, because ‘tomorrow’ is actually Friday to them, not Saturday… because in fact, it’s still Thursday.

See, it makes no sense, and that is why I never know what day it is, and sometimes, today can be yesterday, today, and tomorrow all at once.

Then there’s sleeping. It’s hard to sleep in the daylight. Even with black curtains, light still seeps in through the adjoining bathroom window, and around the tops of the curtains, and through the doorway leading to the living room. And it’s warmer in the daylight. A person’s body temperature drops slightly when we prepare to sleep, and the cooler night air aids one in this task. I’ve learned something in the last two years - I cannot sleep if the room temperature is over 70 degrees F. I wake up, I sleep restlessly, I wake and sleep and wake and thrash and toss and turn and struggle. It is difficult, even with air conditioning in the summer, to keep a south facing bedroom below 70 degrees. In the winter, it’s easier on both conditions. Unfortunately, that means I suffer a bit from SAD, since I…. never ever see the sunlight.

Last December, I walked home at eight in the morning and could watch the sun finally poke over the horizon from my living room window before I went to bed. And when I woke, it had been dark already for over an hour. Sunlight was a bit foreign to me, and I grow a bit… homey and lazy and a little depressed because of it. Believe it or not, darkness makes me want to sleep! *laugh*

Other oddities - I eat ‘breakfast’ every day… but my ‘breakfast’ food turns out to be more like… dinner. Because everyone eats dinner at exactly the time of day I’m waking up. So for ‘breakfast’ I’ll often have, say, tacos, or roast beef, or spaghetti. And for ‘dinner’ I’ll have hashbrowns after I get off work, or cereal, or eggs. Breakfast food at normal breakfast time, but definitely not ‘breakfast’ for me. And for lunch, of course, it’s leftover ‘breakfast’ or something nukable since I have no lunch hour at work and must just be content with whatever I have at the office. Not like there’s any stores open at 3am!

More, I deal with being social, spending time with family and friends, right after I wake up. In fact, A often calls me within 2-3 minutes after I climb out of bed. Yes, this is deliberate. Sometimes, she calls many times in a row hoping I’ll be semi-awake while I’m in bed and hear the phone, and get up to answer it. Because hey, it’s social hour for her. For me, it’s like… wtf, can’t I shower, man? So often, I’m up and out of bed and having company before I’ve even eaten ‘breakfast’. Which is a little odd. I actually would love to be able to, say, get up and have some me-time before I greet the day. Doing yoga right after I wake as the sun rises or whatever sounds lovely… but it’s just not practical. For one, the sun is going down, and for two… people don’t like to start calling on friends after like, eight o’clock. I mean, they have lives, too, and sometimes they actually sleep during the night…

So some of the daily rituals I’d like to do just aren’t very feasible. I’d love to live a more natural, in tune with nature daily cycle, but I just can’t do it with the shift I work.

Oh well. Bigger and badder things to worry about, I suppose. But it’s something that’s been vaguely pricking at me for… like… a year.

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