Tuesday, October 24

Morning follies

I've surprisingly handled this 6 am shift well. For the most part i can attribute my ability to stay awake throughout the day largely to mass coffee consumption. I have basically increased it five fold, which is to say i am wired all day... Nowadays I have to get up at 4:30 every morning, five less hours than what i am used to. In an attempt to save 30 minutes of sleep, i've tried getting up at 5:00 am (showering before going to bed, to save more time) and jumping in the car at 5:15, but that has proven to be a difficult proposition because i hurry so much that i forget stuff, and most importantly, i am not alert enough to drive yet... I need that long therapeutic bathroom session, to brush my teeth, wash my face, sit on the toilet for a while if need be, a large black coffee to go, to get me going...

The other night i went to bed, at like, 8:45 PM. That is the earliest i've gone to bed since i was a child. In comparison, i don't even go to bed that early on Snowboarding Nights when the alarm is set to go off right at 4 am. The problem, really, is not so much waking up and getting my blood flowing in the morning, I'm not one of those heavy-sleeping people whose had to develop a fault tolerant redundant array of multi-alarm systems that go off successively just to make sure they hear it, i wake up instantaneously at first beep (plus i can't stand the noise). In other words they've had to setup more than one alarm clock for you non-technical souls haha... The problem is, more than anything, is going to bed on time, or rather not going to bed on time... Who the heck goes to bed before 9 PM anyway? If i could somehow make my way to bed before i realize its past 10 PM, i should probably be okay. But that's just it, i can't seem to do that...

The upside to this otherwise laborious 6 am shift is that traffic is relatively fluid in the morning and bearable enough in the afternoon drive home. Coming in at 10 am and leaving at 6 during training was just stupid because traffic both ways averaged an hour and ten... The 405 freeway as you would expect is heavy anytime during the day whether it is a weekday or weekend. It's like the worst place to be in LA... My only worry at the moment is that i haven't gotten used to it yet and i'm already in my second week on the schedule. I suspect it'll be a while before i become physiologically ready and able to function right at this new position...

More on this later...

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