In fact, I don’t actually *like* sleeping on dirty floors.
PRO TIP: When carrying what is obviously a pillow, blanket and yoga-mat through an office park, just keep your chin up and roll your eyes at anybody who looks at you inquisitively, like they’re a dumbass for not realizing how this is normal.
Which, frankly, is kinda true.
Man, I am SICK of fighting this world to be able to sleep. It’s not like my sleep-requirements are odious, like I want, like, 14 hours of sleep at least six of which falls between noon and dinnertime. I want HALF the sleep most people get, and I need less of it during the day than most people take time out for food, again, by half.
And yet. Here I sit again, having smuggled in a blanket, down to my fourth-best-seeming sleep option because this office, in both architecture and culture, is mean as hell to sleep.
Also, I just want to say, I’ve been a professional techperson a long time. When I was 22, I had an office of my own, and while I’ve been steadily promoted since, at every job my chances of having a nice place to work get slimmer. This is the most responsibility I’ve ever had at a job - any more promotions and I’d be a serious executive (EEEK NO NO NO) - and I work at a dismal Ikea table in the corner of an empty room with mandatory fluorescent lighting and three other people’s tables. Put simply, offices have gone to SHIT. And while most of them maintain at least the basic accouterments of eating, and some even pay more attention to their eating-space than their workspaces, approximately zero have done anything to consider making periods of physical rest possible. Hell, if your ergonomic setup isn’t outright killing you, you’re supposed to be grateful. (They’ve offered to get me a better table. YAY THANKS.)
I’ll upload a picture of my napping spot when I can, because it’s hilarious, I’m literally hiding out like a criminal. Think “dead end cement-floored landing at the top of an unused stairwell”. THE LUXURY OF CORPORATE AMERICA.
OK, I’m a tad bitter. Finding this job was brutal, and I haven’t been here a month and man, do I have CONCERNS. Some of them are standard “man, corporations in this country suck ass” type concerns, and some are obviously sleeping-specific because shoot me, sleep happens to matter to me; and some of them are more lofty, I-believe-in-good-tech-and-am-not-impressed-with-upper-management type concerns…and the latter, more than anything, are a real threat to my being able to stay here. I’m great at my job, but there is no being skilled enough to do a good job as a tech manager when you’re standing in opposition to the people you’re supposed to be making happy (who are not the same people as the ones YOU think you should be making happy…).
Anyway.
Since I finally recovered from the torture that was the first week of traveling and being outright forced to not sleep, and finally found a napping spot after 2 weeks of miserably trying to make a cold car work on a tight schedule (nope), and that whole time I’ve been somewhere between “lagging a bit” and “involuntarily passing out for hours at a time” … I guess now it’s time to try and figure out a sleep-schedule that works with this, frankly, shitty schedule.
Here we go…again.
I can’t really sleep earlier than noon, more realistically 1pm, and I have to be at work by 7am. So waking up at 4 is problematic - it gives me 7-8 hours awake, and I really prefer to not have it be longer than 6 hours, 7 at the absolute outside (which means not-flexing-past-7).
So far I’ve been addressing this by sleeping from ~2-5 (usually beginning an hour or so earlier, because my naps have been getting shredded by work, and if I don’t get at least 2 good naps a day, I can’t live on 3h at night-shocking, I know!), then getting my first nap (or more often, missing it) around noon, then snagging another one about 4:30pm - that seems to work well - and then getting a third nap late in the evening, around 8:30-9pm. …That’s a hard time of day/night for me to wake up, and I don’t care for it right now; I miss napping around 6:30 and then staying awake until after midnight…waking up from a nap after 9 leaves me with a groggy I have a really hard time shaking.
So, unideal. Everything is unideal right now, kinda. But at least I’m starting to be able to sleep again, and at least I’m not letting the recent B.S. kill my sleep schedule outright: It did for a few weeks there, but thankfully that was SO awful that it reminded me thoroughly how unacceptable it is for me not to be able to nap. So I’ll nap in a concrete hallway in my fucking suit for now, knowing full well that if work catches me, they’re likely to be Extremely Unthrilled. But as much as I need “a job”, I need sleep - good sleep - a lot more, so they can suck it.
Now, time to switch to decaf - nap in 2h. Wish me luck.
Originally published at counterclockwise. You can comment here or there.