Time Enough at Last

As of the end of my shift tonight, I'll have completed one full work-week on the new schedule. And I believe this fact is to be credited almost entirely with changing me from the Ms. Grumpypants of last week into the Happy Camper of this week.[*] In particular, going from 10-hour shifts to 8-hour shifts is just an incredible change for the better. It's not primarily that the shorter shift seems to go so much more quickly in comparison, thought that's certainly part of it. Mainly it's due to the fact that those extra two hours of free time before I have to go in to work make an amazing amount of difference. Previously, when I was on the night shift, I'd sleep until 5:00 PM or so, nurse my customary three cups of coffee, read my e-mail, shower, dress, maybe run a couple of errands... And by that point, it'd be something on the order of eight o'clock, and I'd find myself thinking: damn, I have to leave for work in about an hour and a half, so there isn't really any time to start anything. But now, I don't have to be in until a little before midnight. Now, it gets to be 8-ish, and I still have hours before I have to leave. No more sitting around killing time watching Win Ben Stein's Money or something because I don't want to start anything that I'm not going to be able to finish or can't concentrate on when I have to keep watching the clock. I can actually do stuff. Admittedly, from a productivity standpoint, it's probably be better if I did stuff other than watching movies and playing computer games, which is mostly what I have been doing with the time this week, but that's not the point. The point is, I feel like I've gotten my life back. Yeah, the shorter shifts mean that I'm only going to have two days off this weekend instead of three, but under this new schedule, I don't have to change shifts next week. Which means I don't have to spend those two days in a sleep-deprived haze, or lying in bed tossing and turning as I desperately try to reset my internal clock in a way that just isn't biologically feasible. Sounds like a damned good trade-off to me.

So, if you, wherever you are, can faintly hear a huge sigh of happiness and relief... It's me!

[*] Although I suppose the majority of the credit really ought to go to my brain chemistry, which seems to be such that my usual default mood is a sort of laid-back, vaguely-pleased state. Stress and lack of sleep can disrupt that equilibrium pretty badly (as you may have noticed), but once things get better again, I tend to return to it pretty quickly. For this particular biological accident, I am profoundly grateful. I've known people whose default state was depression, and I wouldn't wish it on anyone.

P.S. Oh, and it ended up not raining today, after all. Yay!

P.P.S. Five trivia points to the first person who can tell me where I stole this post's title from.