Scheduling Challenges

I've never been a morning person. Well, unless you count Saturday mornings during childhood where my body always managed to wake up before 7 AM. I'd curl up on the floor under a blanket, inches from the TV with the sound turned down so low it couldn't possibly disturb anyone and watch the colorful lines or just plain fuzz until cartoons would officially start. But that was being alert and awake for something enjoyable. I usually ended up being the first person awake at retreats in the Czech Republic as well, but that was because those rotten beds were all so hard that I couldn't sleep. Besides, being up early meant I had a nice chance to wander through the countryside alone and collect my thoughts before having to deal with a bunch of noisy and excitable Americans :)
The point to this trip down early morning memory lane, is that my new job has taken a turn with my scheduling. Over the past few months I've mostly been working early morning shifts. This is also nothing new for me. I worked as early as 5:15 AM doing janitorial work in college, and when I worked at the mill my shift also started at 7 AM just like stock did here. I can do mornings, I just don't really like them. Now everything has changed. All this week I'm working closing. We're talking 1:30 to 9:30. That's a big change.
Part of me likes this. I can sleep in. I don't have to force myself out of bed when it's still dark, and try to make friendly with people before the friendly light comes on inside my head. But the truth is, it's not a great schedule. Even if I do manage to get up early enough to get something done in the morning, the whole time I feel like I'm just sitting around waiting to go to work. And there's never that feeling of, "Work is over, and now I can just relax." When you get home at 9:30 or 10 all you want to do is kick back. How do you get things done at that time of day? It just doesn't happen for me. We watch a little TV, maybe play some Foosball, but that's about it.
My goal right now, considering my writing challenge and all, is to get some writing done in the mornings before I go to work. But life is full of distractions. It's hard to settle in and feel like I can really get much done. There is this never ending need to create excuses, rather than actually come up with something. I've got about 17 pages written or so, but every time I think I'm about to really get somewhere with it something comes up and I don't get to finish, or it's suddenly time to shovel down some food, change my clothes and go to work. I really want to complete this on time, but I can already see that I'm going to be just scraping by. Unfortunately, being the lowest person on the totem pole at the moment, it looks like this is the schedule I'm going to have to learn to deal with for the next couple months. Guess I just have to see how it all plays out, and fight with myself to find some way to get it all done.