The perils of sleep deprivation.

So, I’ve been working nights over the last few weeks. This is not something bad, I actually enjoy this a bit. Working an exclusively night shift is a bit better than working those day shifts than extend into a night shift - the ones where you are in the office by 10am and out very, very late.

Night shift means some days you are around when the sun comes up and sometimes you are out before midnight, the point is working that night shift means a day rarely goes longer than 13 hours and 13 hours is usually the exception.

Night shift also means I drive into the city which can or can’t be enjoyable depending upon traffic conditions but, coming home is generally blissful and quick. Nobody is on the road at the end of your day and actually I find it takes me significantly less time to commute home than it would during normal hours - normal rush hour commute time being somewhere between an hour and fifteen to an hour and forty five minutes versus about forty minutes door to door.

The day turns into a quieter experience overall, there aren’t office politics on night shifts generally, most people aren’t around for the entirety of the shift and generally it’s just a matter of going into the office and getting your work done.

I have to admit there’s something about “the quiet” aspect of the night shift that I enjoy. The city is more peaceful and serene too. New York is truly one of the most beautiful places you could imagine, especially late at night when a calm descends on her. The lights in the buildings are gorgeous, the streets serene, there’s just a different aspect to the city when you’re not trying to play dodge with all the other people to get where you need to be.

But, there are drawbacks...

Working night shift, your sleep cycle is never really regular. What I mean to say, at least for me, is that I find myself either wide awake or absolutely exhausted at the oddest hours. If a day goes exceptionally long, I’ll try to cram in some of life’s more mundane chores (laundry, post office, etc...) at the end of the day - morning to the rest of the world and wind up getting to sleep around 11 or noon only to wake up a few hours later to go back in.

Other times I’ll just get home and sleep through most of the morning waking up sometime early in the afternoon and slowly getting myself together to get ready for the ‘day.’

Certainly though, one is on a completely different schedule than the majority of the planet and that’s where the problem as well as the charm of things lie. Days off are relegated to returning to a more normal sleep pattern or at least catching up on sleep to the point of not walking around feeling like a walking zombie.

So, if anyone wonders, it’s not a slight of any kind, I’m just in a constant state of adjustment which should be ending soon.