Graveyard Shift

There's a reason we call overnights the "graveyard shift." First of all, they will send you to an early grave. Sleep will be a thing of the past, your friends will probably forget you exist, and the few calls you do take will be the sort that make you wonder what kind of a town even is this? 

Don't ask me how long this design took. 

Have you ever been up for 24, 48, or 72 hours straight? How far can you stretch what little rest can be garnered from a 45-minute power nap? How long does it take to manually override your circadian rhythms to match your shift schedule? (Seriously, if anyone knows the answer to that one, I'm all ears.)

Second of all, the graveyard shift will push you right up to-- and, if you let it, over-- your edge. Since taking it on full-time, I have tested and pushed my physical and mental limits, bringing my body and mind to the very brink of the shadowy abyss of insanity.

It started when I moved to town. My roommate at the time, Elle, asked me to move out so her partner could move in, and a conveniently timed posting for an apartment close to work had me registering as the newest Town resident.

Bettie has been with me since college.
No home is complete without her.

The day the lease was signed I was facing not only copious overtime (since rent was more than doubling now that I was on my own), but also an insurmountable amount of unpacking. Each day at the crack of dusk, I rose from a mattress on the floor surrounded by stacks of boxes that loomed in the darkness. I could all but hear the crackling of clear plastic tape, coming to life with the sole purpose of suffocating me with the help of the packing peanuts.

The only upside was getting to finally prominently display Bettie. The pin-up was a point of some contention between me and Elle, who thought tapestries churlish and undignified for anyone too old for college dormitories. 

Still, in spite of my newfound solitude, the new apartment proved to be more of a hinderance to my sleep than an aid. One of the first problems I faced was the adjustment to my new bedroom. My old place had only one small bedroom window facing a convenient, sunlight-blocking forest. A set of blackout curtains sealed me into a comfortable coffin of simulated darkness, which proved invaluable as I transitioned to nights. 

when you're a lost little dispatcher in the suuun...

But this new bedroom had two generously-sized windows, and both let in a lot more natural light. Normally this would be a major selling point, but for me it just meant I had to double down with my undead measures. It took three sets of blackout curtains and shades, as well as a sleep mask and noise-cancelling headphones just to convince my body it was time to sleep. Even with all of that, it didn't always work-- which is when I learned that strange things begins to happen when one is sufficiently sleep-deprived. 

At first, I was just tired, all the time. No amount of sleep seemed to satisfy the aching need behind my eyes, and any dimly-lit room suddenly seemed as good a place as any to curl up and take a nap. During  this phase, I found myself struggling through each rotation only to crash hard at the end, often sleeping straight through my days off. Though I've never once fallen asleep at the dispatch desk, I have to admit that I came pretty close a few times during this period.

After a few days or weeks had gone by like this, I began to adjust a little too well. Suddenly I couldn't sleep more than two or three hours at a time, even on the rare occasion when my schedule permitted such a luxury. Tired no longer applied: I was restless, running at a constant level of heightened anxiety. When I went to give blood, something I try to do with some regularity (after all, I make the stuff for free), I was informed that my blood pressure had gone up by a notable margin. It felt like I was back to playing ADHD on hard mode: even my cheat codes (medication and coping mechanisms learned through years of painful trial and error) were failing me.

Twenty four hours without sleep is doable, if not entirely pleasant. Thirty-six puts your brain into a fog, and suddenly following entirely mundane conversations feels like trying to decipher a second language you were once fluent in, but have fallen out of practice with. Like... you're speaking the same language, but there are holes, and working around them is exhausting.

the meme in question, made the next night

By forty-eight hours, delirium starts to set in. At one point, I think I hallucinated talking on the phone with my brother about a meme that I'd made the night before, only to realize as I pulled out my phone to find it that, not only did the meme not exist, but I also wasn't on the phone with anyone. 

My personal life was beginning to suffer, too. I was chronically irritable, picking fights with friends and family members, misinterpreting innocent comments as insults, forgetting or sleeping through obligations, missing calls, ignoring texts... I was a shell of a person. Many of the relationships I relied on for support began to erode, cracking under the pressure of extreme exhaustion.

The revelation that something had to change came when I got into a fight with a loved one after staying up for about 36 hours. As tired as I was, I had been unable to realize how some of my words and actions that day had come across, and as a result, I had stuck a wedge between myself and one of the people I needed most in my life. Though I apologized later and tried to make amends, the damage had been done, and the cracks in the relationship might not be ones I can heal with words. After that, I doubled down my conviction to maintain a somewhat-regular sleep schedule, only allowing myself to stay up through the day on special occasions.

The other main issue I've found with graveyard shift is the call volume. As a new dispatcher, it's hard to maintain the skills you learn in training without regular practice. So even though from a seniority standpoint it makes sense to stick the new guy on the crappiest shift, from a training perspective, the practice is less than ideal. It might not be a problem for seasoned dispatchers switching between PSAPs, but for me, it's a nightmare. 

Proof: I recently took a call for a fire at a local business, toned out, and was subsequently advised that I had just tried to send my fire department out of jurisdiction. The call turned out to be a hoax, which made my mistake superfluous in the grand scheme of things, but certainly didn't reflect well on me as a professional. A more seasoned dispatcher might have recognized the signs, but unfortunately I just haven't had enough practice.

The thing about the call volume at night is that it's low, with most of the calls coming from monitoring companies (the convenience store down the street averages about 1.5 false alarms a night) or medical alerts. 

But the few real emergencies you do take are bizarre. Three AM is about when Ms. Carol's sleep paralysis demons usually decide to throw impromptu raves in her bedroom, and it also happens to be when Trip McFalldown most frequently visits the lavatory. (I swear the man has bones of steel. He's gotta be pushing a hundred years old, and he falls at least twice a week-- yet somehow, it always ends in a signed refusal.) 

Belinda, too, is always good for a healthy dose of eccentricity in the dead of night, since she never just answers your damn questions.

Design available here!

Conversations with Belinda usually go something like:

"9-1-1, where is your emergency?"

"See, my husband is in jail, so of course Felix is the only one around here who pulls his weight around here--"

 (It should be noted that she does not have a husband and that Felix is a cat.)

"Ma'am, where are you calling me from?" 

"Yes, so anyway, the lemonade came out really sour, and of course that was unacceptable so last week we went to the DMV--"

"Belinda, is that you?"

"Huh? Yeah, honey. Anyway, I can't find Felix, and somebody stole my new lacy panties from the clothesline again!" 

(Her house also does not have a clothesline, although I can unfortunately confirm the undies, having been asked to advise Belinda to put on a bathrobe from now on when I send EMS to her house.)

The weirdos are my favorite part of the job, but sometimes, the endless stretch of hours between 2 and 6 AM sometimes feel like they exist in suspended animation, somehow removed from the space-time continuum with everybody else

Nevertheless, there's something to be said for night shifts: they do give me plenty of time for passion projects. This blog, for example, wouldn't be possible without the dead zone between the drop-off of activity each night and the pick-up each morning. 

I've also read more than I have since I was nine and spent every weekend at my brothers' baseball games. This includes the textbook for EMT school, despite the fact that I can't yet afford tuition-- why not get ahead if I can? 

I've even started picking up new skills: some basic programming (which helps with the upkeep of this blog), lockpicking (the goal: to break into the secret stash of snacks hidden in Dave's locker) and Morse code (so I can eventually hold a conversation with the ghost that haunts the station lobby).

I've also started experimenting with graphic design, and one of the results is my growing collection of dispatch-themed designs I've started putting on stickers. (Check them out here! All profits go into a jar labeled "EMT School" on top of my fridge, although I'd have to sell about 8,500 stickers for that. Probably I'll just donate it once I'm enrolled. Hey, maybe if I figure out how to code a poll in HTML, I can take a vote on which first responder support charity is most deserving of $3.89?) 

At the end of the day, as boring as it can get sometimes, and as jarring as the whiplash can be when something totally unhinged happens in the middle of an otherwise dead night, I'm content. As long as I have the discipline to maintain my sleep schedule and don't forget to socialize once in a while, I'm optimistic that graveyard shifts don't need to be the death of me.