The past few days at work have tired me out. Aside from adjusting my sleeping schedule to my work schedule, the work itself stacked up after some expected and unexpected failures in what helps us complete work. I guess I’m not too riled up about the unexpected failures. Those happen occasionally. But what I will continue to harp on is management and upper leadership’s failure to support the workers at the bottom who take the brunt of the hits while those away from the destruction contemplate for hours what to eat for lunch, despite eating not longer than two hours ago. 

Basically, if you’re in a managerial or supervisory position, you’re paid more to do a little more. Do that little more and the people at the base won’t be disgruntled.

Regardless of that rant, I wanted to mention that it seems like I’m getting used to the sleep schedule. It’s my day off and I was able to see that magical time right before the sun peeks its head into the sky, where everything is touched by a soft blue, the chirps and tweets of birds outpaces the white noise of cars, and the cold air is mostly still, but beginning to stir a tiny bit. It’s nice and psychologically, waking up early makes me feel productive. And a little bit special, to be honest.

I remember first being on this schedule and feeling excited to be a part of something so foreign to me. When I was a teenager my father had a similar schedule for a few years, but other than him I didn’t know anyone who was a part of the witching hours regularly. And the few times that we did talk, my father rarely brought his work into the conversation. So, the logistics of how the world even ran in some capacity at that time was unknown to me. If not being a part of it, I wanted to at least see it.

Initially, it was miserable. How everything still moved so quick and violent, despite everyone never being fully awake. Everything ran on instinct, the path of least resistance always taken even if it meant lasting consequences for the rest of existence, primal responses for the primal necessity of desires. 

Perhaps I had different expectations for those hours - a sleepy and gentle beast that submitted to the singular desire of sleep. All paths would lead to sleep, even if it meant jumping through more loops to get there. And perhaps these expectations, combined with normal insecurities of being able to complete new job functions and my own insecurities of needing to fit in, compounded stress and steered me away from enjoying these hours. In fact, probably made me despise the time.

The moment that I was able to, I applied for a shift that began when the sun was already out. The work was simpler too - the environment and people weren’t as stressed and thus were more flexible, more malleable to what needed to be done, putting aside their instincts. This went on for a bit before I was forced back to the dark hours. I spent a bit of time there and, despite writing about it now, realized that a large part of the stress of the dark hours were the people. I realized during this time that misery really does love company. People I saw on a regular basis enjoyed spreading it under the guise of friendliness and necessity. 

When I came back to the sunny hours, I was convinced that I’d do whatever it took to stay there. The days passed by with little trouble, little resistance toward anything. But, after a while, my ambition was slowly disappearing. And this isn’t attributed solely to the sunny hours or even one singular thing, but I knew that the ease of the sun wasn’t helping me move. Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing, but I wasn’t quite where I wanted to be and I had to move to get there.

So, now, coming back to the time and seeing the moon change over the course of nights, when things move when they should be still, well it feels like it’s helping me move again.

Or maybe my process requires me to have a constant change in order to function at a capacity that I want. That seems like a possibility, too. But for now, this is working and I might even say that I’m slightly enjoying it. When it isn’t working or I’m absolutely miserable, then I’ll troubleshoot it again. But until then, I’ll just go about with this.

Hope all is well with everyone. Happy June to you.