I am off to a terrible start with my New Year’s resolution to post at least four times a month. Life lately has not been overly busy, but it has been disorienting to say the least.
I rigidly controlled my routine through college, as the structure was the scaffolding preventing me from tumbling from the cliffs of textbooks into the whirlpool of homework. Now, I have to let go of that expectation to embrace a rotating work life.
Antipodes: the parts of the earth diametrically opposite, the exact opposite or contrary
Night shift, day shift. Routine, flexibility. Order, chaos. Hospitals never close, so much of my time is spent in the rocky transition period between polar schedules. Sometimes every gear in circadian rhythm protests loudly, preferring to run like clockwork.
I’ve never realized how much energy is saved by having routines. I’ve never had to debate whether I should wake up in the morning, but deciding when to start the day when “morning” is 7pm is exhausting. The first few months of this schedule I felt I walked on alternating sides of a fault line between nightlife and daytime, with seismic activity during each transition.
Now I’m beginning to have a set of routines around my new needs, and have begun getting up an extra half hour before starting out to enjoy the morning, making sure it includes coffee and Gregorian chant. And I know just how much of the day I can use ahead of an all night jaunt, and it often includes a trip to the gym to get some extra energy to start off.