Recently, I switched from night shift to day shift. This means I now do 7am-7pm, instead of the other way around. As much as I loved my night shifts and my fellow night-shifters, I'm very ready to get assimilated back into the 'normal' daytime world. While working days may impede my social night life a little (those 5:45am alarms come awfully early on Saturday morning) I am much, much more of a morning person than a night owl. Up until my first night shift, I had never pulled an all-nighter, like ever. Much to my surprise though, I adapted pretty quickly and soon grew fond of my night shift. What I wasn't fond of, however, was how easily I slept in until 4 or 5pm on any given day. I think that was the biggest deciding factor for me when requesting to move. I wanted to be able to 'sleep in' and still have most of my day ahead of me.
I learned many things while working nights, and I'm interested to see how day shift measures up in the weeks to come.
things I have learned since I started working the night shift:
-There are indeed grocery stores open at 2:00 in the morning,
-However, gas stations do in fact close.
-It is impossible for me to do anything coherent after working (THIS IS ACTUALLY FALSE, occasionally)
-I do not need caffeine to get through a shift
-Redbox/Netflix has been my saving grace on nights I don't work
-one can bake a LOT of cupcakes at 1:00am.
-once getting off work, it never ceases to surprise me that it's sunny outside.
-I am able to sleep for ungodly hours at a time, in the complete daylight.
things I have learned since switch off night shifts:
(in the whole week it's been)
- I have ingrained into my head military time.
-I am constantly surprised when I get off work and it gets dark like 30 minutes later.
-my theory of "I can function on 4 hours of sleep" still pretty much applies
-to all my night shift friends I have 'crossed over to the dark side'
-the amount of energy I have after work is outstanding, I mean I can actually get things done on days I work.
-one can bake a LOT of cookies on her days off.
-I have grown very fond of naps
-I now appreciate even more being able to wake up and have the whole day ahead of me.
