I’d forgotten how my attitude to sleep changes when I’m on 3rd shift.
When I’m working 1st shift, sleep happens when there is time for it. I know I need sleep because a lack of it makes me cranky and dumb. Given the opportunity, my body would choose to sleep from 02:00 – 10:00. As a result, going to sleep at 22:00 – 23:00 in order to wake up at 05:30 is not a natural choice for me but my body did figure it out eventually. The weekend is often a time to catch up a bit on my sleep, sometimes even to the point of curling up on the couch while Spongebob or Oddparents is on and taking a little nap. It’s not that I find those shows boring but that I’ve seen most of them so I’m not struggling to watch them as I doze off, afraid I’m going to miss something.
When I’m working 3rd shift, sleep is a necessity. In fact, I feel I need more of it to survive the night. I do not tolerate myself dozing off at work so the more sleep I get, the better. The first week or so was no problem; I got home, ate a little something and would pass out on the couch watching the Muppet Show before waking up enough to go to bed. After that, I started over-sleeping, sleeping for 10 or 11 hours straight, waking up tired and grumpy. I started setting the alarm on non-busy nights to stop this. In the last week or so, I’ve started under-sleeping, not unlike being on 1st shift and only getting 6 or 7 hours of sleep a day. I keep myself busy during the weekend nights, afraid that I wouldn’t nap but sleep and be unable to sleep during the day. That would just lead to a screwed up sleep schedule during the week.
Long term that plan isn’t viable. There’s stuff I have to do during the day and, if I was going to stay on 3rd shift, I’d probably try to learn how to sleep in chunks of time, get up to do stuff and sleep more, rather than sleeping all at once. My buddy the cop does that and it seems to work for him. Luckily, this shift isn’t a long term plan. Unless something goes horribly wrong, this is my last night on 3rd. Hooray! Now my friends will no longer be scared by emails I send at 03:00, at least until the next time I stay up too late drinking…
Speaking of which, don't post drunken comments on people's MySpace pages in the middle of the night. It's like writing down all the stupid stuff you say when you're drunk so you can see how dumb you really are at that moment. And no one wants that. Well, except me because I think it's funny. That's just me I guess.
