Sleep...

Granted, I am writing this at 4:30 AM, so I am at my worst, but this will just show out my true emotions (and I guess my bad English).

I am really tired of my sleep schedule. My job at Swagit keeps me up late: usually Monday nights I get home around 1 or 2 AM, but sometimes there are nights like tonight where at 4:30 I am looking at at least another hour, probably two, plus an hour drive home (don't worry, I am plenty awake... I will stop and get donuts on the way). Tuesday nights I tend to have the same hours as Monday nights, but I sleep at work, so that saves me an hour drive home. Wednesday I am up early ("early" = 10 AM) and I work through 5 PM at which point I drive to Bible Study (or more recently I just drive home because I feel so bad).

Thursday, Friday, and Saturday I sleep until noon then stumble through the day. Sunday I am up at 7 AM for church, and I am awake all day for that.

See, the problem is not the late hours. I don't mind the 4, 5, or 6 AM drives home... that is, I wouldn't mind it if I could guarantee 8 hours of sleep. But that won't work because I have things I need to get to in the morning. For example, I have a staff meeting to go to tomorrow at 1 PM. 1 PM sounds late for most people, but think about it this way: the meeting is 8.5 hours from now. Minus 1 more hour of work tonight (that is being optimistic), a 1 hour drive home, and 20 minutes in the morning to drive to church, I am at 6 hours of sleep. And that doesn't count the time it takes me to get to sleep at night, the fact that I was planning on going to the post office in the morning to get my passport (I am now thinking about doing it later in the day), OR the fact that I was going to have a meeting with a guy before the meeting.

Not only is it that I can't get 8 hours of sleep at night, it is that I can't keep a constant sleep schedule. Because I have church early Sunday morning, I can't keep an all-nights-sleep schedule, it is constantly changing, constantly throwing my body for a loop.

I want to be clear, I am not speaking against Swagit here. I love this job, it pays well enough, and it takes care of the bills. (In fact it is these late nights that really pad my pay check.) Heck, I even have plenty of down time to write out a long blog post. But I find myself wishing I didn't have this job, simply so that I could get my sanity back.

I just wish there were a clear answer, a better way to do this. If only Swagit wasn't a night job, if only I didn't have to be awake in only a few hours... if only... if only life were easy. Wouldn't that be nice?

Then again, I look at some people who have to fight life so much more than I do, and I see how blessed I am, even with all of my "if only"s.

Please pray that God helps me through these physically tough days.

Matthew