Ugh

I'm still having problems sleeping. I woke up at 12:30 this afternoon, which translates to about four hours of sleep. This wouldn't be too big of a problem, but, like the massive chump I am, I volunteered to put in another shift tonight (even though I'm supposed to have Fridays off). This'll make seven straight days -- or rather, nights -- of work for me in a row, for a total of, I believe, a 58-hour work week. And I've been doing it on an average of maybe five or six hours of sleep per day. (Now, I know there are people who seem to function just fine on five or six hours, but I'm not one of them. I'm one of those people who functions adequately on seven, better on eight, and best on nine. Sigh.) Between the extra work, the lack of sleep, and the emotional stress I've been under lately, I'm a little worried about coming down sick, which would be pretty counterproductive, given that calling in sick would just negate the progress we're making by cramming in all that overtime.

This particular kind of sleep disturbance, as it happens, is very common with shiftworkers. I remember reading somewhere that your average night-shift worker ususally averages maybe five hours of sleep a day. Night owl that I am, it's generally not a problem for me, though. (Morning shifts are my bane.) I think there's a couple of things going on here this week that make the difference. One is that my body clock just got kind of screwed up somewhere, and it doesn't quite understand that it's time to be on the night shift now. I know that this is the case, because it's 1:30 PM, I've had four hours of sleep, and I actually feel like it's now "time to be awake." I'm a bit out of it, but I'm far less groggy than I "ought" to be, and you can damn well bet that it's going to catch up with me later (probably just about the time I'm having to go in to work). The other problem is one that I have occasionally had in the past, and it's been badly exacerbated by the fact that I've been working so many hours lately and I haven't had time to get much of anything done other than work. That's the phenomenon where you wake up, realize it's early afternoon, and start thinking about all the stuff you could get accomplished if you just got out of bed now instead of rolling over and going back to sleep. I had that in spades this "morning." Lovely inner monolog going something like, "Hmm, yes, but if I'm awake now, I could get some laundry done and pay all those bills that have been piling up and get out to the bank, and I could get all that done before Farscape comes on tonight, which'll leave me the evening to get caught up on my e-mail and do fun stuff for a bit..." Yeah, like I'm gonna be all productive and fun-loving on four hours of sleep. But tell that to my subconscious. Feh.

All right. I'm done bitching now. Time to finish my coffee so I can go and get started on that laundry and stuff. Yep, I'm just a slave to the nagging little voices in my head...