Sleepless in Cape Town

I can't sleep. 

 Maybe it's because I've been getting by with four hours sleep lately. Suddenly presented with a night with no deadlines, no looming exam to cram for, no early morning flight... in fact nothing but nine hours up for grabs for slumber my body has like stage fright or something. My brain has swallowed its own off-button. I've always been terrible at mornings and fantastic at nights though. It’s amazing that I've managed to build any career at all up to now considering my brain usually only warms up around 6pm. 

A few years back I was working as a process engineer at a washing powder plant in Gauteng. I'd been at that plant for about a year. It was May (I think) and annual wage negotiations between management and the union had begun. (Insert announcer voice: "Let's get ready to rrrrrumble".) 

 

Apparently negotiations are always a bit of a dance -  a few steps forward, a few steps back, give a little, take a little - but this time the dancers on either side were not even agreeing on the song. And then there was a strike. A long strike. 

Engineers, managers, accountants, planners, secretaries... we got our hands dirty to run the plant. To keep South Africa's laundry clean (ok it would still have been cleaned but with competitors' products).  

 Most people had to be begged and cajoled into signing up for night shift to keep the plant going 24/7 but a similarly nocturnally inclined friend and I rushed to put our names down for indefinite night shifts.  This was one time in my life that my working hours were truly aligned with my inner clock. It was easily one of the most blissful two weeks of my life (until it suddenly wasn’t, but that’s a post for another day).  

I would leave home just before sunset. I felt so focused, so mentally sharp at work - which sadly hardly happens while the sun is out, seriously. For some reason working at night didn't feel that much like work. I would get home after each shift at 7am, take off my safety boots and dusty jeans, eat Cinnamon and Apple Oat-So-Easy and collapse on my couch. I can still remember it clearly… The Autumn sun shining through the blinds, the sound of people leaving for work, and then eventually the silence of the day. I found it easier to sleep during the day than I normally did at night (I still do); fading into blissful sleep thinking of all the normal people slogging away at work.

 Unfortunately most jobs that I could do at night are either dodgy or dead-ends. *sigh*