angry – Foxes Den

3am in the morning and I’m wide awake. Damned annoying as I know what the cause is. It’s been an issue that has pestered me in excess of 30 years now and it’s called –

Shift work

I’ve been working shifts in my job for about 35 years now and I still haven’t come across a way to get your body to adapt to all the changes that shift work burdens upon you, and number one in that list is insomnia.

Insomnia, also known as sleeplessness, is a sleep disorder where people have difficulty sleeping. They may have difficulty falling asleep, or staying asleep for as long as desired. Insomnia is typically followed by daytime sleepiness, low energy, and a depressed mood. It may result in an increased risk of accidents of all kinds as well as problems focusing and learning.

Wikipedia

As if you need it explaining to you. Now I don’t suffer from permanent insomniac conditions, mine is purely based around the segment that involves night shifts. My shifts cover 24hrs and are on a five week rolling cycle. They involve three main sets of shifts and those shifts are 0600-1400hrs, 1400-2200hrs or 2200-0600hrs and at weekends they are either 0600-1800 or 1800-0600.

I have just finished a run of 11 consecutive night shifts after one of my coworkers has been taken ill. And that’s the problem. I finished at 0600 yesterday morning and deliberately did not sleep beyond 11 am as I’m now having to swing back to daylight timings, as I now have the weekend off before transferring on to the early mornings shifts from Monday. I was suitably tired last night, in fact I was all day, but I resisted the urge to nod off as I wanted to try and fool my body clock in to getting back to normal habits. But my body clock doesn’t work like that and isn’t having it.

Over the years I have tried many ways to try and evolve my body clock to understand when moving from Night shifts to day shifts. I’ve tried not sleeping at all, but that results in irritation to all those around me, and a general malaise that is unproductive and non conducive to a friendly peaceful atmosphere. I’ve tried the couple of hours in bed routine but that again is problematic as you fall in to such a deep sleep, so quickly that whoever is tasked with waking you up undoubtedly gets both barrels and you don’t speak for the rest of the day getting labelled as a miserable old git. Or you can just go to bed and wake up when you feel fit to, as I did yesterday and here I am now, in a blacked out bedroom putting my thoughts into this post, quietly as my wife sleeps beside me.

I’m totally wide awake and ready to go. But I don’t want to go anywhere…just yet.

I know I will pay the price later today by feeling tired and tempted to take a nap, however I have to resist that temptation and try to get back to a normal sleeping pattern tonight.

I must apologise in advance to all those individuals who I will meet today who think “He’s a miserable old git.” If I’m nodding as we talk it’s not that I’m bored it’s just I’m lacking the one item you have probably had plenty of.

Sleep.

I can’t get no sleep….(to quote a superb tune)