I Am Not A Morning Person. Not By A Long Shot.

Due to a combination of staffing shortages and an influx of work (though I suspect it's mostly the former), we have had overtime available for the past several weeks.  I have taken advantage of it.  Not because of the overtime pay, which has, I think, a semi-sized loophole (I might blog post about that later), but because my supervisors asked me very, very nicely.  Well, also because most of the others do not come in early and/or stay late, and as we've been warned, if the work builds up to a certain point, OT becomes mandatory.

We can work an extra two hours to make a ten-hour workday during our scheduled week.  (Sometimes less is offered on weekends.)  Since I still have the test scoring job, I cannot stay late.  Therefore, I come in early.  And Christ, as much as I appreciate the extra pay and want to show I want to help out, damn, it's hard to wake up early.

I usually get to work at 7, so when OT is offered (and it's usually Wednesdays and Thursdays; that's just when the bulk of the forms we mainly are asked to work on during OT come), I can get there around 5.  Way back when, when I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, I could come in at 5.  I'm not so bright-eyed and bushy-tailed anymore.  And to be honest, this change in my inability to get up early and maximize my OT time has come in the past couple months, during this current spurt of overtime availability.

Just for curiosity's sake, I have looked back at the receipts of mornings when I come in early.  When I do OT like this, I have "treated" myself by going to the gas station and getting that instant-frap crap from that machine they probably never clean, as well as a hot burrito that's cooked up behind the cash register (although if I were there early enough, there wouldn't be any hot burritos), and maybe a lemonade to help me during the day and Cokes as a reward for slogging through a ten-hour day.  The times stamped on the receipts are a reflection of when I got up, and also when I get to work and punch in:

• 5/12: 4:37 a.m.
• 5/13: 4:32 a.m.
• 5/19: 5:01 a.m.
• 5/20: 5:06 a.m.
• 6/16: 5:06 a.m.
• 6/30: 5:13 a.m.
• 7/14: 5:26 a.m.
• 7/15: 5:28 a.m.

Now, I have to caution that there may be some days where I am filling in for a specific position that has a call time of 6:30 a.m., and thus I could get there as early as 4:30.  I don't remember how early I could have come in on which days.  Still, even with not knowing whether I can start work as early as 4:30 or 5, you can obviously see a slow yet inexorable slide towards lateness.  It seems apparent that, considering the circumstances in my life now, it is getting harder and harder for me to wake up as soon as I can to get to work.  The problem is, besides being tuckered out after my night job, I can't explain why.  You can see clearly that a couple months ago -- when I think I had a test scoring project to do in the evenings -- I could get up just fine.  In fact, assuming I give myself an hour to get up and get out, I was actually able to wake up at 3:30 in the morning.  If I had my way, I would go to sleep at 3:30 in the morning.  But as you saw in mid-May, getting to work (after eating in the car and putting up all the shades) at a quarter to 5 was not a problem.

It is now.  And I don't know why.  By that I mean I don't remember ever going to bed early the nights before the above dates.  I pretty much followed my routine of going to sleep around, oh, 1 or so.  I do not believe I, for example, went to bed as soon as 9:30 rolled around and I was done with work.  I don't remember going to bed before midnight.  Assuming I kept staying up as usual, I then, well, can't quite see how me staying up has caught up with me, you know?  No, it's not ideal for getting rest.  But as long as I catch up on my sleep on the weekends, I would be able to tolerate getting only, what, three hours a sleep in the middle of my workweek, right?  And yet last week, when I was doing the same thing I do around this time of night (blog posting and hanging on the Internet), I thought to myself, "Oh shit, I am going to get only three hours of sleep.  Fuck me."  I didn't have that thought in June or May.  But I was going to bed at the same time all three months.  So now I have a newfound fear of staying up too late?

And ... oh shit, I am going to get only three hours of sleep now.  My workday today is supposed to begin at 6:30, which means I can get to work as early as 4:30, which means I should set my alarm clock to 3:30, which means I will get in fewer than three hours of sleep -- which probably means that I'm going to sleep in.  I promised my supervisor I'd come in early for overtime, but I'm deathly afraid I'll be so bleepin' tired I'll get to work at, like, 5:55, and if I'm coming in only a half-hour early, I might as well have refused overtime and get as much rest as I can.  Know what I mean?

What I know is I ain't no morning person.  And I think I should go to bed now.