Jet Lat? Or Something Like It...

Can you still call it jet lag after more than a week? I'm beginning to feel oddly suspicious that it is simply a deranged new sleeping pattern. I can remember times flying back from Hong Kong, typically an emotional mess, that I would go more than thirty hours without sleep and then turn into a gooey mess of time flipped confusion that seemed to go on for ages. Typically this was because I coddled to myself. If I felt tired I let myself sleep. Worse yet, I would let myself sleep whenever I felt like it for as long as my body felt like sleeping. Rookie mistakes that spread the adjustment process out for far too long.
I no longer have any excuses. I am no novice flyer. Okay, so it's not like I'm some sort of world traveling journalist or something, but I've done my fair share of getting around the planet. I know that, while it's fine to sleep as much as you want on a flight, when you arrive the goal is to stay up as late as humanly possible, then wake up when your body prompts you in the morning, regardless of how early that may be, and then press on actively all day until you collapse into sleep at the end of a long day at a reasonable hour. It's not an easy thing to do, but if followed the system works. This is especially true on holiday trips when you have only a couple of weeks to enjoy whatever distant land you have come to discover.
However, this trip is not like that. We have three months. That's almost enough time to be sloppy about it. If we spend a week in mindless self indulgence, we aren't going to waste our entire trip. There is still time to go into town and bask in the golden glow of the ancient spa hotels. The oplatky isn't going to all be consumed without us. The trains will still be there.
Then there's the whole issue of the snow. It's not really piling up just yet, but in a short lap around the house with Katcha the other night, I came in completely covered in white. It's sort of messy and all tied in with cold and wet, two things that have never been my faves.
At the same time, another thing that has never been my favorite, is the early morning. True, when I was a tiny tot I would miraculously wake up before 7 every Saturday morning in order to curl up in front of the television and watch the fuzz until the cartoons would be begin. The house was generally still asleep, except maybe for Dad, and I would keep the volume so low that it required me to sit within a few feet to hear anything at all. And I can't deny that Redding sunrises are a spectacular sight to behold, but I was always more than happy to curl back up in bed after witnessing them during my work mornings in college.
Anyone who knows me very well at all, or who has ever seen, or even worse HEARD me in the mornings is well aware that they just don't do it for me. I'd rather stay awake until 5 AM than get up at that heinous hour. But that is exactly what I have been doing. True, this is largely due to my sweet husband, who doesn't have my strict rules about getting over jet lag having only made this back and forth journey once in his life, and has been taking long afternoon naps that sometimes stretch until 3AM and then being fully awake through all those early morning hours. On both Tuesday and Wednesday he came in cheerfully at 5 and informed me that it was morning and therefore time to get up. The pitch blackness beyond the lacy curtains was more than enough to convince me that he was a liar. Mornings are supposed to be about warm sunlight stealing gently across the floor and sweetly nudging me into wakefulness. Apparently not any more.
While I was able to groan and squeal, and mostly convince him that what he was doing was sick and wrong, the damage was done. I was awake. The fact that his parents were up and getting ready to head off to work didn't make escaping back into blissful oblivion any easier. So on both occasions, by 5:45 or so, I gave up. Sure, it's true, you can get stuff done in the morning. I caught up in my journal, finished reading a book, and got back into my Denise Austin exercise videos. These are good things. They make it easier to be at least slightly energized and ready to go by 9 AM when I've been beginning work on my book writing.
Unfortunately, it also means something more sinister. By 8 PM I find myself getting downright groggy. 8. P. M. This is NOT okay in my book. Not even a little bit. So I know people who put their toddlers to bed that early, but I scarcely remember a time when 9 was not my earliest bedtiem. And I didn't even go to sleep right then. That was when Dad would start reading to us, not to mention prayer time that I always tried to stretch out as long as possible with the hope that he would fall asleep on the floor meaning I wouldn't have to fall asleep in the room alone. This was in large part because my dad IS a morning person.
Anyhow, I've been using whatever devices I can to keep myself up just as long as possible, but it's depressing to find myself falling asleep before ten, completely unable to keep my little eyes open. Then, this morning, my body had the audacity to wake up at 5 AM of it's own accord! Talk about total rubbish. I put off turning my lamp on until 5:30. The other half of the bed was already empty, seeing as how he had slept through most of the afternoon and evening, and had only come in for a little visit between 2 and 2:30 when he have up completely and went back to watching TV in the other room.
I'm really hoping a pattern isn't being established here that will run on for very long. Eventually I'm going to need to be up at night. It's just a must for my general well being. So for the state of my nerves, I think I'm just going to keep calling this jet lag a little bit longer and hope it all evens out in the right direction soon.

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.

Halfway point

September is halfway done. Seems like only a moment ago that it just started. I remember when I was a kid thinking people were crazy when they would talk about time flying. Christmas was always forever away. Sure, I was able to make my Halloween candy last until I had to throw the last few crusty lollipops and tootsie rolls away for the fresh haul, but waiting for it to be dark enough to go trick-or-treating took AGES.
Now I find myself suddenly one of "those" people. The type that blink and find that a decade has gone by. Not even joking. College was like five seconds ago, right? How is it possible that April marked ten years since graduation. It just doesn't seem possible. But when I think about it, I know it has to be true. There was the mill, then Hong Kong, then Albany, then Hong Kong again...you get the picture.
I suppose living life by the year has something to do with this. There is such a strange balance in my life sometimes. I love to be organized, to have things under control, to know what's going to happen next. But I live on the edge. I make a life plan for a year. Then it tends to get all thrown out of whack as I make the next plan. And that's how time just freakishly evaporates.
Right now it's been the non-stop work thing that's had my days all in a tizzy. Despite still being counted as part-time, I worked so close to 40 hours (over the course of 6 days) last week, that they sent me home earlier than scheduled. Heaven forbid they'd have to be me time and a half on my paltry $7.30 an hour. This week the SRL (stock room lead) has been out sick. That means I've had to step up and fill in her role. It wouldn't be so bad if there wasn't this silly mathematical equation I'm supposed to figure out to calculate how fast everyone is working and if we're up to company standards. In a word: LAME. But otherwise it's kept me ultra busy. Then I get home and another round of demands are made on my time so that suddenly it's bedtime, due to the fact that I've been getting up at 5:40 most mornings in order to ride "the bike" to work.
I like being busy. Don't get me wrong on that point at all. When I lived in Hong Kong I thrived on sleeping as little as possible. Every moment of every day was some how taken up with people and sights and activity and the joy of life. I actually had to block out times to go to Starbucks where I could be alone (amazing how well that works out in a cafe so crowded I generally shared a table with one or two complete strangers) and get my thoughts out.
The real problem when life gets all hectic like this is that I disconnect from things. I get all caught up in a daze and have to fight to focus on anything. And I have so much trouble getting anything actually done because there is so much to do that I can't even get started on anything. (sigh) I know, whine and complain a little more already.
I'm hoping this weekend that I'll have a little time to curl up with myself and reboot. There has been a lot of sickness going around at work, and I can't deny that there are moments when I think it would be a little bit blessed to fall ill and have an excuse to just do nothing. But I know that, in the end, being sick is miserable. I don't want to be sick. I want to have a job, and to do all things well. I just also need to keep that whole balancing act in check. Like those things I wrote a few weeks ago that I'd like to be doing. They're still there, wanting me to get them done.
Perhaps in a couple of months when we head to Czech I'll manage to find a little time to pull myself together, to figure out how we're going to work things out for the next year or so. Since I won't be working, and haven't exactly been able to save anything since we've been here, it's likely that there will be plenty of down time. I guess I just have to work to keep myself all in one piece for now, and wait and see how it's all going to work out. That's the great adventure of life after all. Just take it as it comes.