Broken Clock

OK, you know, switching myself off night shift is always a little problematical, but at the moment it seems like my internal clock doesn't just need resetting, it needs a major overhaul and perhaps replacement with a new, digital model. I'd almost swear I could hear the little "sproing" noise as the spring that keeps it wound went shooting off across the room.

My sleeping pattern (or more accurately, lack thereof) over the last few days has gone like this:

Friday: Got off work at 8:00 AM. In bed by nine-ish. Woken up by the alarm clock at 5:00 PM. (Yes, I set my alarm so I could get up and watch Farscape. Go on, tell me this suprises you.) Felt like I would have enjoyed another couple of hours sleep, but was fine once I got some coffee into me. Started to get sleepy again around 4:30 AM, went to bed and fell asleep without, as far as I remember, too much difficulty. Yay, me.

Saturday: Woke up at 8:30, convinced it was actually much later than that, despite the fact that I really didn't feel like I'd gotten enough sleep. Gradually talked myself into accepting wakefulness, to the point that when I actually looked at the clock and realized it was still Too Damned Early, I was stuck with it. Figured it was just as well, as it probably meant I'd be able to get to sleep early and thus back onto something more resembling a normal schedule (ha!). Spent the day feeling sleep-deprived and cranky. Went to bed around 10:00 PM, feeling very tired, indeed.

Sunday: Woke up around three in the morning, had a little difficulty getting back to sleep but eventually managed it. The next time I woke up, it was light out, but it still felt really early, so I kept telling myself to go back to sleep again. I drifted in and out of light sleep for a while, then finally decided I probably wasn't going to manage any more solid rest. At this point I finally looked at the clock and discovered that it was after noon. Yep, I'd been in bed for about 14 hours, and, oddly, I still didn't feel particularly rested. There's a difference, you know, between the grogginess you get from insufficient sleep and the grogginess you get from oversleeping, and this felt a lot more like the former than the latter. Weird. In any case, I eventually shook it off, and felt pretty awake all day Sunday, until around 11:00, when I started feeling a bit sleepy again, at which point I went back to bed.

Monday: Woke up at 4:30 (!). Now, you have to understand, some people may consider 4:30 AM to be morning, but for me it's a going-to-bed time, not a getting-up time, so this represents something very fundamentally wrong in my universe. Anyway, I woke up at 4:30 and could not get back to sleep, despite still feeling appropriately sleepy. I suspect this may, in part, have to do with the fact that I woke up absolutely ravenous, having eaten nothing in the short time I was awake yesterday but one piece of pizza and some ice cream. Oh, and a couple of pieces of toast. Anyway, as I type this, it's about 6 AM on Monday, and I'm kinda-sorta awake, or at least functional enough to type, but I think I can predict with a fair amount of confidence that I'm gonna be getting pretty darned punchy by the time I get off work at midnight tonight. Bleh.

Sigh. I hate to say this, for a whole host of different reasons, but I'm starting to think I might be getting too old for shift work. I'm also wondering if it isn't time to swallow my pride and turn to pharmaceutical sleep aids. My usual "Bah! I don't need no stinkin' drugs!" attitude, sadly, is beginning to wear a little thin under the weight of the evidence.

And, yeah, I'm sure you're all just incredibly, deeply fascinated by all of this...