I Think These Hours are Going To Kill Me.

A quick side track about the work arrangement I've made with my employer. As I may have mentioned here previously, I'm working out the rest of my employment contract remotely. However, given that we're between 12 and 13 hours ahead, I end up having to work some odd hours.

Right now, with NZ daylight savings time having just kicked in, my work hours are 6am to 11am, NZT, which is 1PM to 6PM Ottawa Time. However, come the time that Ottawa moves back an hour into standard time (they are currently in DST) my work hours will shift to 5am to 10am.

Now for those of you who have known me a while, morning person is NOT a qualification often applied. That being said, I'm trying it out to see. So far, over the last 4 days it's not gone as well as planned. Daylight Savings kicked in this weekend here in New Zealand, which is a bit of a kick in the sleep pants as it were, since we'd only just gotten over the jet lag from coming here in the first place. So I tried to go to bed at 10:30, failed, didn't sleep much on Monday. Ended up getting up around 10..

Tuesday, tried to go to bed at 10:00, but 1 sleeping pill and 3 hours later I was still wide awake. I finished the book I was reading, ended up passing out and getting about 4 hours sleep spread over 6 hours real time. Got up at 8:30.

Wednesday I made it to bed at 10:30, having forgone coffee and caffeine for most of the day (had a bit of tea) and discovered the joys of earplugs. Fell asleep, slept, and got up at 7 this morning.

If i keep this up I think I'll be able to manage 6 am until the switchover in canada.

The alternative is to ditch the morning life completely and start working nights. Midnight to 6am seems more reasonable, and would line up with the beginning of the work day in ottawa (8am to 2PM) so that might work. I haven't flown it by my boss yet though, and there's some social and logistical issues with that..

I leave you with a sneak peak of photos I took in Picton. A blog entry about the weekend is forthcoming.