redkanga

Working late at night really, really, really sucks… I had forgotten that in the space of little more than a year that it has been since I was laid-off from EarthLink. After 6 months of looking for working (i.e., getting up late in the morning, making some phone calls, faxing & emailing resumes, etc) and another 9 months of working psuedo-construction as a voice & data installation technician (maybe it’s really more like construction lite…) where I generally get up around 5 a.m. to get to a job site, working nights is a very difficult transition.

I had forgotten that your body attempts to compensate for being awake at night by punishing your digestive system, causing your eyes to burn in the daylight, altering your perceptions of temperature… just to name a few things. The real kicker is that it’s not so bad the first couple nights. You go to work and do the job that is intended. Sure you’re a little tired, but no big deal you get to sleep in tomorrow - at least that’s what you tell yourself. The second day isn’t so bad either, it’s almost like you’ve gotten a second wind. It’s not until you have a couple days off, days in the sunlight, and then go back to work that it really hits you. Five days into a 12 (or more?) day project and I’m starting to feel like warm jello. The disruption in sleep patterns alters your mental abilities, makes the simplest tasks difficult. I’m not sure how I managed to survive as a nocturnal creature for the four years I spent on the graveyard shift in the network operations center.