22 days of nights...

...and i'm barely a week in. it's been a year and a half since i worked the midnight shift, i've been straight days ever since. flipping my schedule upside down has done some nasty things to the routine i've been working on, and my house is a mess. i have no idea when is a good time to eat without digestion issues, it's incredibly hard to sleep in the daytime no matter what measures i take to do so, and i'm just incredibly exhausted. it took me months to get used to the upside down schedule, and less than a couple years before i couldn't do it anymore.

i really had little choice in the matter this time. inventory is coming up fast, and we are nowhere near ready to be judged. what i have to do to prepare involves making an incredibly huge mess to clean and condense, something i just can't do on day shift with a bunch of people around. it wouldn't be safe, and what i can get done in a night would take me a week. thus, it is necessary. at least it's brief.

hopefully next week will be better. i work tonight, then i have the weekend off. that's one plus at least, i have no competition for my schedule, so i get the weekends off through the whole ordeal. i see a little more of matt since we're both on the same shift, we have gotten into a routine of watching a movie around noon to prepare for bed. that's about the only part of a routine i can nail down for now. i have to force myself to stay awake until the afternoon because i need to wake as close to work time as possible to save my energy.. but i'm so crushed the morning after my shift it's hard to accomplish anything else.

it's not all bad, i must admit that i do enjoy my walk home in the morning. the sun warms my back, and i can step slowly, no longer in a hurry. night shift is always more relaxed too even though there's so much more to do. not being business hours we can act as strange as we like, and holler across the store if we need each other instead of paging and calling. that and we can all break together. in fact, we must as the doors and alarms are only unlocked for the duration of our breaks. it's a tight team, that i also enjoy.

i'll be back on days for a week before i take off for my third and final journey of the year, i'll be flying out to the dominican to photograph a wedding for some friends. it seems so far away right now, but it too is coming up fast. it'll be a trip indeed, i've never been to an island. a dream to look forward to after the inventory nightmare is over. ahh well, such is life...