Some of my most panicked moments involve sleep or lack thereof. Currently, my sleep consists of mostly tossing and turning with sporadic bursts of sleep.

It wasn’t always this bad. Granted, I’ve never really been an easy sleeper. But things seemed to get worse after I decided to take a hiatus from full-time work and spend some time with my family. This was just before the recession.  Little did I know that jobs would be really hard to come by. And thus started a stretch of intense job insecurity and anxiety. This obviously worsened my sleep tremendously.

I returned to the workforce in a low paying job but luckily I was able to get into better paying positions. But there was just one catch!, they have all been shift positions. So far, I have done

• 3rd shift (8pm to 4:30am). That was a nightmare. I got maybe 2-3 hours of sleep and was perpetually tired.
• 2nd shift (12pm-8:30pm). This shift left me so wired and tired that I could not fall sleep till the early morning.
• 

• 1st shift (5am-3:30pm) This is my current shift. It’s a 4-10 shift. I get a 3-day weekend which is awesome. But to get to work at 5am, I need to be up no later than 4am. And that’s really tough when your sleep sucks. Most nights I find myself awake at 1 or 2am not even sure if I’ve actually slept. Talk about panic!! I just want to scream;
• 

I feel very hopeful this morning though. As we speak (or shall we say write and read), I finally have a job offer that has regular hours (9am-5:30pm.)  I just counter offered but regardless of whether they accept my counter offer or not, I will accept the job. I’m so looking forward to returning to normal working and sleeping hours.

Then it will be up to me to put some good sleep habits in place and start sleeping better. Let me know if you have any ideas.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/panicked/