Urban Fiction: Living it Out - Day Four: A New Beginning

Working the graveyard shift changes your entire world. During the workweek, things may not seem so bad, but once you get to the weekend, that’s when it can go stupid…quick.

Even the simple question of when to sleep becomes very, very important. Just imagine that everything inside you is pulling on you with twice the force of gravity toward the bed, but everyone and everything else is on the up and on the bounce…. Not a good thing.

I don’t know how Nate Richards would handle this, but for this first week back on graves, I decided I would just transition back to the world of the day-dwellers for the weekend. Oh, that sounded so easy at the time. It sounded so good.

So this was me…just try and find the thread of common sense in this, if you can, drop me a post because I’ve seem to lost all mine. (Smile.) Friday morning, I got off a little early, around 05:00 hours and then spent some time in prayer and then had a good workout. So far so good, right?

But then I had a meeting with my editor scheduled for 10:30, so since by the time I finished my prayer and workout it was close to 06:30….(Why go to sleep right?) Well let’s just say we worked on the manuscript until 16:30 –that’s 4:30pm for you civilians – and then I had another meeting with a fellow writer at 18:30 so why sleep here. Are you starting to see the insanity slip in yet?

Well that meeting ended at 21:00 hours and I finally arrived home at about 22:00. I sat in front of the tube to relax. But guess what? I work the grave shift so my body and mind kicked into let’s go to work mode. Yep, that’s right, I was suddenly wide-awake…fully alert. Ready to go. Whereas that would be fine –this sudden alertness- for working the streets, not so much for going to bed.

So, I say all that to say this. Sometimes when you are working the grave shift, it’s just easier to leave the day dwelling to those accustomed to the light. The night is for playing…. Just saying.