People are always saying they don't know how I do it. It being overnight shifts alternating with day shifts. And while they don't always directly ask how I do it, I am sometimes compelled to ponder how I would answer such a question. If I had to say one thing that is key to staying up all night, it's mindset. I've tried every combination of trying to sleep in the morning before an overnight shift, napping in the afternoon, over caffeinating myself etc. But none of these things has served its function of keeping me awake through the whole stretch like adjusting my mindset has. It's too easy to go into an overnight shift after being up since 8 am thinking, "Dear God, how am I going to pull this off!?" This kind of thinking actually makes you more tired though. I've found that if I just forget that I've been up for that long and that I have to be up much longer, it goes a lot more smoothly. It's exhausting thinking negative thoughts. And if I can manage to distract myself from those kinds of thoughts than I can usually go a pretty long time without getting terribly lethargic. I sometimes even go into work pretending that I haven't already been up for almost 16 hours.
I'm not going to lie and say that there aren't nights when I've passed out at work (see last night), nor would I say that there aren't moments throughout the day and during the overnight shift that I get tired, but basically if I've had 8 hours of sleep the night before, then even if I don't pull of a brief nap, I can usually make it through relatively well if I try not to think about how much it sucks. I even have spurts of energy at select times throughout the evening. Right when I arrive at night, sometime before I take my lunch at 4am and the walk to the train from work at 7am are the big ones usually. The slump comes anywhere between 2 and 5am.
So, I've found a way to pull it off because I have to…for now. That's not to say that I'm not so sick of it that I want nothing more than to be my own boss for a change. But, all in time.
In a few weeks, I've got some freelance work with George Perez of "Peeper: A Sort of Love Story" fame. I'll be operating the boom mic on a couple of weekend shoots in November for his series titled "Life." This'll be the first scene of the pilot episode. Should be tons of fun. They're shooting on location in the West 40s on 10th Avenue. Gritty Hell's Kitchen location that they scared up. I've yet to check it out but it should set the stage quite nicely for the scene we'll be shooting.
More on that later. I'm still trying to get things square away with the old apartment and get settled in the new so I can start composing again. I had a little bit of an issue with my speakers when I set up the computer today. Not something I can't fix but it always seems like every few months something comes up like this. Some technical issue that puts a damper on my progress. I'm just glad it's something that I can work around for now. And not something necessarily earth shattering.
Either way, I can't wait to get my space comfortable again. I think the worst part about moving is the period of feeling unhinged. I had to unpack a bunch of things in the kitchen before I could even cook breakfast this morning and that took a chunk out of my morning. Because you start looking for what you need and you find ten other things that you think you want to put away. It's hard to stay focused. Especially when the exhaustion starts to kick in. Speaking of which...
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