This graveyard schedule is horribly unkind to me. My life for the past two weeks has been an exercise in forbidding myself sleep when I need it most, and forcing sleep when I can’t. I am unrested, and my soul is unwell. I am on day two of my three nights off, and I want very much to sleep. Had to shake myself out of catnapping in my chair. Why? I don’t need to screw my circadian rhythm up again — I have one week left of this graveyard insanity before I have to slip again into the evening swing shift. The benefit of the graveyard and swing is that I have four days on and three days off, but while I’m in it I hardly feel like a benefactor. I feel horrible.
The most depressing part is that the night and evening shifts are solitary — I’m the only soul on shift in the office. And when I’m on my night off, even more so, since everybody else is in bed or at work. Everything’s closed. So I stay home or go to the cafe. Wash, rinse, repeat. The sunrise starts beautifully, with its blue promises, but soon the activity of life starts up around me and I’m reminded that I have to go back home and attempt sleep. My eyes suffer from the sleep mask i wear, my memory suffers from the thin veneer of sleep that wears on me.
My only solace at this point is that in a few weeks, this will be over and I will be able to sleep at night again, when I’m programmed to sleep automatically. I will return to normalcy soon enough. But right now, I’m chewing at my heart to fill the hours with something that’s not meaningless. If only.
Mud in my mouth
Sand in my shoes
As I try to walk off
These inversion blues.