Pushing Thirty

     I don’t seem to interface well with business hours.  I’m hoping that the exhaustion and low energy level I’ve been left with at the end of each day is just some sort of employment jet-lag, that my natural rhythm will take over at some point and I’ll know the way a day is supposed to go soon.  I’m not all that good at changing routines, I’ll  admit that, but this has been totally different.  I was pretty much a career waitress for a long long time.  I could carry 25 pounds of used fajita setups on one hand with the best of them, never close to toppling yet balanced like a Jenga game about to go wrong.  Eight margaritas on a tray, no problem.  Carrying buckets of ice up flights of stairs while dodging servers and runners, no problem.  Start work at 11am and roll out of the restaurant at the end of the night at 2am, no problem.  So why can’t I do regular hours at a position that is much less physically draining?

It doesn’t seem to me like spending the time from 7am to 5:30pm on my couch, lifting only my hands to type customer information and dispatch calls should leave me as tired as it has.  I’m literally working in my pajamas with a cup of coffee and morning television to keep me company between calls these days.  I should find myself at 5:30 ready to go, bounding off the couch to take advantage of the whole night opening up in front of me.  But so far I can just about handle making the trip to the grocery store after I finish up, cooking dinner, doing maybe one or two things such as laundry or finishing the dishes, and then it’s 10 at night all of a sudden, and I haven’t technically relaxed all day.

Help…. I mean, I know that there’s a way that this works, after all, the whole darn world works during the day like I finally started doing.  People get home from work and live their lives.  I had the details down the other way.  I could get up in the morning and get three days worth of stuff done in the morning before I started a shift in the late afternoon and worked till the date changed, take a cab home, wake up, and do it all again.  I’m hoping this is just an adjustment period.  I’m going to try another cup of coffee after I sign out of work to see if that may give me a boost.  I’m trying to make concrete plans with friends so that I push myself out the door.  I’m hoping that just plodding through it I’ll get used to it, but a few weeks in it’s not working too well.  Maybe I need to rework all that I’ve learned of time management, I don’t seem to be playing by the same rules anymore.  Maybe I’m just going to have to grow up a bit more and start learning how all the other adults out there do it.  Whatever it is I just hope I can figure it out, cause this has got me wiped out.