On the plus side, my insomnia gave me an easy answer to the interview question, “What is your biggest weakness?”
“My biggest weakness is that it’s difficult for me to wake up early. But to counteract that, I set multiple alarms. . . .”
Once I took a call and completed an over-the-phone interview while half asleep. It was a reasonable time, 10 AM or something, but I was in a “up all night, down all day” cycle. I got the job.
I didn’t work until college. That wasn’t too bad; I usually worked 30-40 hours a week, but through cobbling together multiple jobs. And as a college student, I had a ready-made excuse to not take the first shift.
One summer was an exception: I worked security at a Renaissance festival. It was about an hour away, and we had to be there before the gates opened at 10 AM. I’d stand on the porch, squinting in the early light (8 AM?), waiting for my sister and her roommate to pick me up.
Well, it felt earlier than 8 AM.
In grad school, I immediately made friends with the woman in charge of scheduling the TAs. I never taught earlier than noon.
After grad school, I worked asynchronously online for several years. I loved it. I am at my best from 9 PM to 1 AM. My husband worked from home, too, so we were able to have weird schedules together.
One night, I was grading papers at midnight, music blasting, happy as could be. Except for the fact I lived in an apartment and the neighbors complained. You can’t blast music at midnight. But it’s hard to grade without it.
Eventually, I added in person teaching to my online work. I took a commuter bus downtown. Sometimes I watched the sunrise through a bus window. Sometimes I got home long after dark. I just didn’t really sleep that year. I was still young enough that I could absorb it, and just sleep in on weekends.
Finally I put all those piecemeal jobs behind me and got a full time job in town. And finally 9 AM wasn’t a problem. I didn’t like it, but it was bearable. I see whispers about it, but I don’t think we talk enough about how commutes impact one’s working and personal life. I took the bus to the job downtown because they didn’t offer free or reduced parking. They didn’t cover bus fare, either, but at least I could read on the bus. I think as an insomniac, taking a job closer to home was a life-saver.
And then there was the life-ender.
In 2016, I took a new job. I was really excited for it; it was an education-adjacent job for a nonprofit that helped low-income/unemployed/homeless/refugees/just-out-of prison people. Both employees and leadership were passionate about their work. I was going to help people.
The catch. The office was 60-90 minutes by car. Public transportation was not an option. To get in by 8, I had to leave by about 6:30. AM. In the morning. I dutifully went to bed at 9 PM, I stopped caffeine after 3 PM, I did all of the things you’re supposed to do. I took the job knowing about the commute, though I hoped I could talk my way into a hybrid schedule; nothing about the job really required me to be in-office.
But the commute just ground me down. I rarely had energy for anything else. Driving home, I’d think about turning off the bridge, turning into a guardrail. There were spots I could do it and not harm anyone else. There was a wide shoulder for trucks near Oregon City that would be pretty good. Or stretches of the 205 where the speed limit is 70, that would provide a good excuse/cover story.
I turned 35 while I had that job. I realized for some reason that age brought with it a curse to women on both sides of the family: Both my mom and sister had had mental health “events” at that age. My maternal grandmother wound up in the hospital for several months. I don’t know about my paternal grandmother, but she would have been 35 in the mid-50s, with several young children and a shitty husband, so.
Even though I was on medication and had seen therapists, my own mental health was fraying. In addition to the insomnia, I was struggling with being more proactive in my own life. Not that I’ve ever been particularly passive, but at that point, a lot of my decision-making consisted of “well, I’ll figure it out, it’ll be alright.” I was plagued, and had been for years, by the idea that I was a bad person. So you combine the two. . .
That far-away job was temporary. They asked if I’d like to extend my contract. I should have said no. No thanks, no hard feelings, move on. But I said yes, I didn’t want to be a bad person and leave; I didn’t want to be a bad person and give up. Surely I could get used to this crushing schedule. They even let me work from home one day a week!
Then I had a nervouse breakdown.
Nervous breakdowns aren’t real, in the sense that it’s not really an official diagnosis. But that’s still a good description for what I was: always tired, couldn’t sleep, suicidal (like for real, not my usual low-level background ideations), no interest in anything. A wreck.
“You can’t go over it,” I’d tell myself. “You can’t go around it. So you gotta go through it.”
That was my bipolar brain, though. I didn’t have only two options, and they weren’t “keep working this job forever” or “quit.” I could have declined to renew my contract. I could have been more forthcoming that, hey, I like this job but I can’t do this schedule, can we compromise? I could have quit but with notice, instead of letting everything build up and explode.
So I quit that job with no notice (great, now I was a really bad person). I started therapy (again), but finally found a way through some of the blocks and traumas that were holding me back. I was fortunate that I could remain unemployed for awhile, as my therapist and I talked through what to look for.
I applied for my current job in large part because it offered an afternoon schedule. No more forcing myself against my natural inclinations. And for a long time, it was great. I’d sleep until 11 AM or noon, then head to work. Maybe a nap when I got home, and stay up until 3 or 4 AM.
However, I still struggled because sometimes I had to be at work early for a special event, or even to cover for a coworker. I was asked to come in an hour earlier on Fridays, and that was honestly a struggle; that extra hour really threw off my schedule.
After my CBT-I work, I can now handle covering a morning shift. I can have a pleasant morning before work, and a pleasant evening after, actually participating in hobbies. This job is in town, also a very short commute, and that is also very important. I’m still working on being decisive and asking for what I need, but I’m better at that, too.
It’s difficult for me to pull apart all of these different strands. It’s pretty normal for college students to work weird hours. Would I have been better off trying to find a “normal” job from the get-go? Did the jobs enable a detrimental sleep schedule that in turn negatively impacted my life? Or was I truly lucky to have everything line up for awhile, and get to enjoy being a night owl?
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