Sleep? Nah who needs that?

In my endless search for something relevant to chat about, I have today stumbled upon the topic of sleep. As I am just not getting enough of it.

Insomniacs of the world unite and lift those drowsy heads.

I know my problem, well I think I do. I am a shift worker of 30+ years now, and in 30 years I’ve never been successful at managing the transition from working nights to doing the day shift. It’s now 06:20 on Monday morning and I finished my long run of night shifts at 6am last Friday, 72hrs ago. I’m about to go into work to start another “productive “ week.

So I’m finishing at 6am, I sleep until about 1pm and then I’m up, do what I have to do and then head for bed about 10pm feeling sufficiently tired and all prepared for a good night sleep. That isn’t going to happen tonight though is it? A little voice in my head decides that at 2am it is a good time to wake up, and wouldn’t you know it, I’m now wide awake.

I’ve been a tad stressed lately as well and that contributes, I’ve had some medical issues develop that are also compounding things but in the greater context, I’m struggling to understand just what the issue is. Oh, and physical activity has also dwindled somewhat lately.

At 2am I fish out my headphones and put Spotify on my phone to listen to some relaxing sounds that guarantee to have me asleep in minutes, excellent, I’ll have some of that.

Two hours later and I am still awake, what I have just listened to sounds vaguely similar to the music you’d expect to hear in a funeral parlour, at times I felt as if I was the cadaver just lying there for my family to inspect. Weird, so I won’t be using that again!

Sometime between funeral introspective time and daylight I must have drifted off for a while, as I was woken with a cup of tea and my wife questioning why I had headphones on. Last night was not much better as we had a windy night here and one of the neighbours gates was banging about causing me to wake up, just as I’d drifted off. I’ll casually mention that today to him with the polite suggestion that if it is not sorted out, my cranky self will probably nail the F***er shut so it doesn’t happen again. I’m sure he will sort it out, once again restoring neighbourly calmness and balance.

Over the 30 years or so of working shifts, I have tried probably, every way of trying to transition from nights to days, and it just doesn’t work, for me at least. If I get up too early to try and force my body to tire early, the wife says I get cranky, if I don’t sleep on the first day of transition at all, I apparently become one of the living dead. I just can’t win.

I’ve probably answered my own questions in the paragraph above, and I requote:

I’ve been a tad stressed lately as well and that contributes, I’ve had some medical issues develop that are also compounding things but in the greater context, I’m struggling to understand just what the issue is. Oh, and physical activity has also dwindled somewhat lately.

There it is. How do you manage that transition, as I’m all out of ideas? I can address some of the above but I just need to manage my days better to achieve things, but work gets in the way. Shift work is a silent killer in my eyes, as Johnny cash once sang: “I l owe my soul to the company store”

And to quote another song, “ I can’t get no sleep”

I’m knackered.

Have a super day. Sleep well.