What a pleasant surprise to see a shoutout my first week subscribing to your awesome newsletter! (Thank you, friend 🫶🏼) I am curious though: what does SITREP stand for?
The most experience I’ve ever had working midnight shifts was years ago when I worked for an agency that operated an open detention facility for young offenders requiring 24/7 staffing. We juggled various shift schedules over the years, and for a time we used one that involved a repeating pattern of seven days each of 8am to 4pm shifts, 4pm to 12am shifts, and 12am to 8am shifts, with, of course, a few days off in between each string of shifts. It was bad enough doing the week of 12am to 8am shifts, so I feel for you doing overnights on a permanent basis, especially in such a stressful workplace as a hospital where you’re called upon to make decisions with life-or-death consequences.
I remember how tough it was driving home at the end of an overnight shift in the summer time, knowing how many other people would be heading off to the beach that day, or otherwise following the advice of my old manager to “Get out and enjoy the sunshine!” I’m not sure how useful my advice on coping with midnights may be to you, but I’ll offer it anyway.
One thing I always tried to do was minimize the amount of caffeine I had in my system when the time came to head home and go to bed. I’d have a coffee or two in the evening before heading off to work, but that would be it until the following evening. I was always worried that even the thought that I might be under the effects of caffeine when I got home to bed would be enough to hinder me from falling asleep. While at work, I drank only water or fruit juice, or sometimes a herbal tea--but not one to help you fall asleep!
Before leaving for work in the late evening, I would make sure I had a reasonably neat and tidy place to come home to next morning. At that time, I was a carefree bachelor living in a tiny one-bedroom apartment, so it wasn’t that hard to maintain an adequate standard of housekeeping. I made sure my kitchen counter was clear and any dirty dishes washed and put away. I never wanted to come home and go to bed with the nagging thought that I’d have clean-up chores to do as soon as I woke up.
I made sure my bed was made, too. It always felt more inviting getting into a bed with the sheets and blankets pulled up and neatly tucked in. As long as it wasn’t going to be too warm a day, I might pile an extra blanket or quilt on my bed, just to create that comfortable womblike feeling of extra weight pressing down on me to make falling asleep and staying asleep easier. And, of course, I kept my bedroom as dark as possible, sometimes draping a bedsheet over the window curtains if it was going to be a sunny day to try and keep out every last photon.
When I was at work and coming down to the last hour or so of my shift, I would start some self-talk to remind myself how tired I was and how good it would feel to go home to bed. After shift change, I never hung around to socialize with the day staff, but headed straight home to bed. I resisted the temptation to stop at the bank or do any grocery shopping or run other errands, and just concentrated on getting home and into bed as quickly as possible. I knew that the longer I stayed up, the harder it would be to fall asleep. If I was able to fall asleep between 9am and 9:30 am and not wake up until 2pm or so in the afternoon, that was usually enough shut-eye to tide me over until the next day, though for sure I felt bagged out.
To help me fall asleep, I would slowly in my mind count backwards from one hundred, or think of some real-life problem or decision to chew over to help me drift off. Another trick was to imagine I was carefully and deliberately telling someone the plot of a short story or novel, not rushing anything in the mental retelling, but going over the plotline step by step. The main idea was to find anything to think of that would distract my brain and body from the fact that I was committing the unnatural act of trying to fall asleep while it was broad daylight.
Not meaning to sound tiresome or puritanical, I’ll add that I gave up drinking a few years ago. As much as I used to enjoy my afternoon and evening glasses of red wine—anything cheap in a screw-top bottle—mixed with tonic water, it became harder as I grew older to ignore the fact that I was imbibing a Class One carcinogen. Plus, the money that I was spending on the fleeting pleasures of alcohol could be put to better use on the more lasting enjoyment of buying more books. If I want to sip on anything in the evenings now, I choose cranberry juice or orange juice mixed with tonic water. Best of all, I now sleep better, sleep longer, and wake up feeling more refreshed.
I’m afraid I can’t help much with ideas of how to pass the time in the dead of night. You’re confined to a form of house arrest and limited from doing anything that generates much noise. The only thing that comes to mind is 1000-piece jigsaw puzzles, or perhaps the time-honoured craft of making ships in bottles. I actually saw a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle few weeks ago that was comprised of all the characters and famous incidents from Jane Austen’s novels, though at $35 (Cdn) it seemed kind of pricey.
Thank you for all your advice on working overnights. I’ve managed to figure out how to sleep during the day which is key. Many of my colleagues struggle with this part of overnights. Nightshift would be torture if I couldn’t sleep during the daytime. (Melatonin and Magnesium is my secret weapon).
I’ve also cut down on drinking sort of by accident. I’m by no means sober but I’m so detached from the normal patterns of life that I don’t find there are many times for me to drink. Of course there are nights when I want to savor of lovely glass of wine but even then one or two glasses and I’m over it. I don’t miss bar hopping or drinking in a more boisterous, social manner.
Last night I was feeling the itch to do something and went digging in my Lego pile to find a flower kit. So I spent a few hours listening to The Mysteries of Udolpho while I assembled (fake) Lego flowers. I often want to spend the evenings painting but the lack of light is uninspiring. I’m sure I’ll finally get a handle on what to do overnight when I’m stuck in the house just in time for me to finally switch back to a normal schedule.
I’m glad you’ve mastered the technique of falling asleep during the day. Just this morning, I was reading about Catherine Morland of “Northanger Abbey” spending a disappointing evening at the Bath Pump Room, only to fall into a nine-hour sleep when she returns home, “from which she awoke perfectly revived, in excellent spirits, with fresh hopes and fresh schemes.” Of course, Catherine wasn’t sleeping during the day.
I have to admit that, with the right company, I could probably lapse back into my boisterous drinking habits of yesteryear. When I saw “Saltburn” this past winter, it was the student drinking scenes that left me with a real pang of nostalgia.
It’s funny you should mention Lego, as I was just out at Toys ‘R’ Us today to get a Lego kit for my seven-year-old Little Brother. I’ll be seeing him at his school tomorrow, and occasionally I like to bring him something new to do, especially when the forecast is for rain. He loves doing things with his hands. But Lego’s pretty expensive, too: I paid $25 for the same kind of kit that was only $20 last month.
As far as painting goes, I’ve only had a roller and a trim brush in my hands in recent years, but it wasn’t always so.
As far as things to do "in the night, in the dark", as Shirley Jackson would say, the only possibility that comes to mind is to take up the study of astronomy. But you have to be careful not to let bats in the house when you're going in and outside at night. Twice in the past few years I've had that happen to me. Nothing worse than sitting quietly reading in your living room in the evening and see something moving out of the corner of your eye, only to realize it's a bat.
Just off the top of my head and without having watched the video, the title "The Death of Negative Reviews" reminds me a similar phenomenon in the theatre and concert world, where every play or musical performance receives a standing ovation. It's not that I'm a great theatregoer, but I've attended plays where the actors were okay, not great, and at the end of the performance when the audience begins to applaud, you see people looking around the theatre checking to see if anyone is standing up, and as soon as they catch sight of someone who is, they look at the person sitting next to them, shrug, and stand up to applaud as well. I know, because I've done it myself. So you end up with every play receiving a standing ovation, whether it really deserves it or not.
At the same time, I sympathize with the actors on stage and can appreciate the amount of time and effort they've put into the show, if only because my two daughters were involved in amateur theatricals when they were younger, and I know how hard they worked to study their lines and concentrate on what their fellow performers were doing on stage. So I'll probably go on joining in standing ovations, if only because it seems vaguely insulting to to the cast to just stay sitting in your seat while you applaud
I understand the standing ovation peer pressure. But we should be able to write news pieces or make video reviews that are actually critical of things we didn't like.
You're right. Otherwise, when we give sincere praise to artists whose work we truly admire, it won't mean anything, which is a disservice to the performers themselves.
What a pleasant surprise to see a shoutout my first week subscribing to your awesome newsletter! (Thank you, friend 🫶🏼) I am curious though: what does SITREP stand for?
“Situation Report” very army bulletin. The books are by troops. 😂
The most experience I’ve ever had working midnight shifts was years ago when I worked for an agency that operated an open detention facility for young offenders requiring 24/7 staffing. We juggled various shift schedules over the years, and for a time we used one that involved a repeating pattern of seven days each of 8am to 4pm shifts, 4pm to 12am shifts, and 12am to 8am shifts, with, of course, a few days off in between each string of shifts. It was bad enough doing the week of 12am to 8am shifts, so I feel for you doing overnights on a permanent basis, especially in such a stressful workplace as a hospital where you’re called upon to make decisions with life-or-death consequences.
I remember how tough it was driving home at the end of an overnight shift in the summer time, knowing how many other people would be heading off to the beach that day, or otherwise following the advice of my old manager to “Get out and enjoy the sunshine!” I’m not sure how useful my advice on coping with midnights may be to you, but I’ll offer it anyway.
One thing I always tried to do was minimize the amount of caffeine I had in my system when the time came to head home and go to bed. I’d have a coffee or two in the evening before heading off to work, but that would be it until the following evening. I was always worried that even the thought that I might be under the effects of caffeine when I got home to bed would be enough to hinder me from falling asleep. While at work, I drank only water or fruit juice, or sometimes a herbal tea--but not one to help you fall asleep!
Before leaving for work in the late evening, I would make sure I had a reasonably neat and tidy place to come home to next morning. At that time, I was a carefree bachelor living in a tiny one-bedroom apartment, so it wasn’t that hard to maintain an adequate standard of housekeeping. I made sure my kitchen counter was clear and any dirty dishes washed and put away. I never wanted to come home and go to bed with the nagging thought that I’d have clean-up chores to do as soon as I woke up.
I made sure my bed was made, too. It always felt more inviting getting into a bed with the sheets and blankets pulled up and neatly tucked in. As long as it wasn’t going to be too warm a day, I might pile an extra blanket or quilt on my bed, just to create that comfortable womblike feeling of extra weight pressing down on me to make falling asleep and staying asleep easier. And, of course, I kept my bedroom as dark as possible, sometimes draping a bedsheet over the window curtains if it was going to be a sunny day to try and keep out every last photon.
When I was at work and coming down to the last hour or so of my shift, I would start some self-talk to remind myself how tired I was and how good it would feel to go home to bed. After shift change, I never hung around to socialize with the day staff, but headed straight home to bed. I resisted the temptation to stop at the bank or do any grocery shopping or run other errands, and just concentrated on getting home and into bed as quickly as possible. I knew that the longer I stayed up, the harder it would be to fall asleep. If I was able to fall asleep between 9am and 9:30 am and not wake up until 2pm or so in the afternoon, that was usually enough shut-eye to tide me over until the next day, though for sure I felt bagged out.
To help me fall asleep, I would slowly in my mind count backwards from one hundred, or think of some real-life problem or decision to chew over to help me drift off. Another trick was to imagine I was carefully and deliberately telling someone the plot of a short story or novel, not rushing anything in the mental retelling, but going over the plotline step by step. The main idea was to find anything to think of that would distract my brain and body from the fact that I was committing the unnatural act of trying to fall asleep while it was broad daylight.
Not meaning to sound tiresome or puritanical, I’ll add that I gave up drinking a few years ago. As much as I used to enjoy my afternoon and evening glasses of red wine—anything cheap in a screw-top bottle—mixed with tonic water, it became harder as I grew older to ignore the fact that I was imbibing a Class One carcinogen. Plus, the money that I was spending on the fleeting pleasures of alcohol could be put to better use on the more lasting enjoyment of buying more books. If I want to sip on anything in the evenings now, I choose cranberry juice or orange juice mixed with tonic water. Best of all, I now sleep better, sleep longer, and wake up feeling more refreshed.
I’m afraid I can’t help much with ideas of how to pass the time in the dead of night. You’re confined to a form of house arrest and limited from doing anything that generates much noise. The only thing that comes to mind is 1000-piece jigsaw puzzles, or perhaps the time-honoured craft of making ships in bottles. I actually saw a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle few weeks ago that was comprised of all the characters and famous incidents from Jane Austen’s novels, though at $35 (Cdn) it seemed kind of pricey.
Thank you for all your advice on working overnights. I’ve managed to figure out how to sleep during the day which is key. Many of my colleagues struggle with this part of overnights. Nightshift would be torture if I couldn’t sleep during the daytime. (Melatonin and Magnesium is my secret weapon).
I’ve also cut down on drinking sort of by accident. I’m by no means sober but I’m so detached from the normal patterns of life that I don’t find there are many times for me to drink. Of course there are nights when I want to savor of lovely glass of wine but even then one or two glasses and I’m over it. I don’t miss bar hopping or drinking in a more boisterous, social manner.
Last night I was feeling the itch to do something and went digging in my Lego pile to find a flower kit. So I spent a few hours listening to The Mysteries of Udolpho while I assembled (fake) Lego flowers. I often want to spend the evenings painting but the lack of light is uninspiring. I’m sure I’ll finally get a handle on what to do overnight when I’m stuck in the house just in time for me to finally switch back to a normal schedule.
Puzzles are shockingly expensive!
I’m glad you’ve mastered the technique of falling asleep during the day. Just this morning, I was reading about Catherine Morland of “Northanger Abbey” spending a disappointing evening at the Bath Pump Room, only to fall into a nine-hour sleep when she returns home, “from which she awoke perfectly revived, in excellent spirits, with fresh hopes and fresh schemes.” Of course, Catherine wasn’t sleeping during the day.
I have to admit that, with the right company, I could probably lapse back into my boisterous drinking habits of yesteryear. When I saw “Saltburn” this past winter, it was the student drinking scenes that left me with a real pang of nostalgia.
It’s funny you should mention Lego, as I was just out at Toys ‘R’ Us today to get a Lego kit for my seven-year-old Little Brother. I’ll be seeing him at his school tomorrow, and occasionally I like to bring him something new to do, especially when the forecast is for rain. He loves doing things with his hands. But Lego’s pretty expensive, too: I paid $25 for the same kind of kit that was only $20 last month.
As far as painting goes, I’ve only had a roller and a trim brush in my hands in recent years, but it wasn’t always so.
As far as things to do "in the night, in the dark", as Shirley Jackson would say, the only possibility that comes to mind is to take up the study of astronomy. But you have to be careful not to let bats in the house when you're going in and outside at night. Twice in the past few years I've had that happen to me. Nothing worse than sitting quietly reading in your living room in the evening and see something moving out of the corner of your eye, only to realize it's a bat.
Oh no! I do not need bats! The woodpecker's reign of terror has only just ended!
Just off the top of my head and without having watched the video, the title "The Death of Negative Reviews" reminds me a similar phenomenon in the theatre and concert world, where every play or musical performance receives a standing ovation. It's not that I'm a great theatregoer, but I've attended plays where the actors were okay, not great, and at the end of the performance when the audience begins to applaud, you see people looking around the theatre checking to see if anyone is standing up, and as soon as they catch sight of someone who is, they look at the person sitting next to them, shrug, and stand up to applaud as well. I know, because I've done it myself. So you end up with every play receiving a standing ovation, whether it really deserves it or not.
At the same time, I sympathize with the actors on stage and can appreciate the amount of time and effort they've put into the show, if only because my two daughters were involved in amateur theatricals when they were younger, and I know how hard they worked to study their lines and concentrate on what their fellow performers were doing on stage. So I'll probably go on joining in standing ovations, if only because it seems vaguely insulting to to the cast to just stay sitting in your seat while you applaud
I understand the standing ovation peer pressure. But we should be able to write news pieces or make video reviews that are actually critical of things we didn't like.
You're right. Otherwise, when we give sincere praise to artists whose work we truly admire, it won't mean anything, which is a disservice to the performers themselves.
I can't wait for you to read Ship of Destiny, it GOES CRAZY
June is Ship of Destiny month! I can't wait!!!!