I'm a Vampire

I spent the past week NOT working the night shift. This was a near-unbearably painful experience for me.

Apparently I hate the sun. I enjoy coming to work just as it starts to sink over the horizon, catching the last glimmers of the darkening sky as I drink my English Breakfast tea after having eaten a breakfast likely consisting of baked chicken and cucumber salad.

I love the blackness of the world during my 12-hr shift. No matter how crazy and stressful things are inside my artificially lit logging unit, the world itself seems that much more peaceful and quiet outside when the sky is unlit.

I adore leaving work while it's still dark out -- I can pretend that it's 10 o'clock at night instead of 6 o'clock in the morning, and thus a reasonable time to go to bed. It's a race to make sure I can leave before the sunrise even begins so as to maintain the self-deception. This is now a lot harder after Daylight Savings, but is nothing compared to the challenges I've faced this past week.

I decided it would be a good idea to work a "split shift" of 12am-12pm so as to learn more about what it takes to be a nuclear cell manager (someone who can run a job involving nuclear tools). In retrospect I don't know why it seemed like a scheme that would work, since there was very little I wouldn't see on night shift that I would see in the daytime. The main difference between working nights vs. days is that the office is twenty times more likely to call up and ask questions or ask for favors during the day, but my cell manager fielded those calls without my help anyway.

Then there was the sun. With Hurricane Ida barreling through the gulf the clouds have kept it at bay lately, but earlier this week I would hiss in pain each time I walked outside to feel the skin-scorching rays hit my face in the daytime. I was almost surprised that I didn't actually start to smoke and crumble to ash like a real vampire (please forgive the oxymoron).

But my new roommate was the proverbial camel's straw. She's a petite Asian woman who works in the galley on the day shift, and spends about two hours each evening puttering around in the room before she goes to bed. For the past three nights she has proceeded to wake me up countless times between the hours of 6:30-9:30pm, and would only settle into the top bunk and turn off the light mere moments before my alarm would go off at 9:25.

So as of today I am switching back to the standard night shift. Hooray!