I’m not a morning person. Oh sure, for nearly all of the last 25+ years I have held jobs that saw me rise by 0500 and be working throughout the day…every day, often on weekends too. Reliably. Every. Single. Day.
In terms of this, I am deserving of an Oscar….because I am clearly an excellent actor. …but I am simply not a morning person. I know this because when the opportunity presents itself I can –and usually will–almost instantly, stay up until midnight or one or two…..and sleep in until 9 the following morning. I can make that transition without adjustment or ill effects. Boom! Good to go…….going back the other way is not so instant….quick in terms of geologic time I suppose, but not as fast as the world might like.
For a while, my residence was an hour’s drive from work….my schedule started at 0500….this meant I left the house by 0400…which meant I was getting up at 3 or 3:30. ….and going to bed by 7 or 8 at night. I was still getting 8 hours of sleep. But I felt rotten. Clearly it was not the correct 8 hours of sleep in the day.
So, you might be lead to believe that I would enjoy working nights. WRONG. I’ve tried it. It’s even worse that getting up early. I even held a couple of jobs in my early 20’s that required that sort of schedule. Start at 9pm, go home at 5 or 6am……I hated it. It does not work for me. It is abysmal. Something about 2 or 3 in the morning…..I’m done. Doesn’t matter when I started working, by 3 am no more good work will be accomplished. Attempting to work through this usually results in feeling sick.
When I worked as a photogrammetrist I had a period of about a year where I started around 3 or 4 in the afternoon…..worked until close to 11 or midnight…then went home……tinkered with other projects and listened to the shortwave or watching and photographing the Northern Lights (both are activities best suited to late nights) …and….usually falling asleep by–you guessed it, 3 or 3:30. Then up at 11 and on with the day. It was not so bad, really. I’m not certain that I would take that exact schedule now…..but being awake from 9 or 10 am until midnight or 1 am definitely seems more natural……..and I often feel some level of creativity during that block of time…….not much creative happens for me between 3 and 8 in the morning. Of course, I have made logistical miracles happen between 5 and 7 am to get aircraft and crews where they needed to be to accomplish the day’s photo missions when I was responsible for that, but even so, rising at 7 or 8 is magnitudes better than 5 or 6.
So maybe all those years of great performance reviews at jobs were really just for my convincing acting ability. Thank you……..you may consider this post my acceptance speech for that gold Oscar.