Wishing I was sleeping

I am not a night owl. I am very much a morning person. I'm one of those people that night people get annoyed with because we function before 8:00am. The normalcy of having my schedule coincide with my body's natural tendencies is rapidly becoming a thing of the past as I'm not home until after midnight and usually have to unwind for an hour or two before sleep is ready to embrace me in its welcoming arms.

This morning (or rather, yesterday morning) was interesting in the fact that when I finally hauled myself out of bed at about 10:00, the lawn had been mowed and the garbage collected and I was only vaguely aware that anything had happened. When I think about the fact that I didn't get up until 10:00, I almost cringe. Back in the day, I would have read the paper front to back, gone for a thirty mile bike ride, showered, started laundry, dropped Xander off at pre-school and read my email at the office by 10:00. Not anymore.

I'd best get used to it. It doesn't seem as though my schedule's going to change anytime soon. I'm still keeping my eyes open for better paying jobs at hours of the day when I actually function well, but I'm not holding my breath that anything will present itself where they might actually consider me. Who knows?

In the meantime, I'll make the best of it. It occurs to me that I've been really vague about my job. For the sake of clarity, I'm working for a large company in a customer support role where I handle written requests from customers (mail and email) and do things like updating addresses, sending information about accounts and dealing with issues when we receive returned mail that we tried to send to customers. Not a glamour job, but at least it involves some creative problem solving and analytical ability, which I enjoy.

We're at a point in our training at work where they check everything that we do to ensure that our quality is solid. I've been at 98-99% quality the whole time which has been above average in the class. My errors have generally been minor ones that would not effect the customer if it slipped by. Monday night's work (which was checked tonight) came in at 100% and I handled 139 pieces of mail in about four hour's time. This is our last week of classroom training before we begin on the job training next week for two weeks. After that, we're on our own. I'm looking forward to being out of the classroom setting.

The great thing about this job is that the whole thing is like one big open book test. We have resources right in front of us to help us do what we need to do. Unfortunately, knowing this has made the training time drag on quite a bit since we talk about processes that I may do every month or so, if I ever do them at all. We also tend to do classroom kind of stuff for the first two hours. Anyone who really knows me, knows that mid-late afternoon is my least productive time of day and the only time of day where I am likely to nap. I'm usually not a caffeine junkie, but Starbucks is a necessity at my first break. I may even have to start trying it before I start my shift.

Well, I've been writing for about 30 minutes and I'm not any closer to sleeping, although you may be after reading this. If so, visit anytime you're having trouble sleeping. I'll likely be writing something that rivals the effects of Sominex.