Early mornings, late nights

I had forgotten about how tired you get after a week of early mornings. For my first four months here, we were expected into the office in time for the 8:30 a.m. meeting, which necessitated getting up (for me) around 7:40. I usually need about 40 minutes to get myself together before heading in for the day. It’s not that anything I do takes too long, but mainly that I don’t move very quickly when I first get up, and if I feel rushed or worried about the time, I forget important things.

Each of the mornings where I’ve been rushing in late for the meeting (there have been 4 or 5 of them), I managed to forget to put on my weapon before heading out of my trailer. Once I forgot my badge, without which you can’t even go into the office! So a morning that starts out late generally turns into one that’s REALLY late, as halfway to the office I realize that I feel anomalously light and unfettered, and after mentally cataloguing through everything, I realize that I don’t have the holster hanging from my shoulders. (It’s this perpetual presence, a little like wearing a backpack all day, every day. I’m very tired of it; it’ll be nice to turn the weapon in when I get home.)

However, a couple weeks ago, we got the word from on high that we were going to have to come in by 7:30 every morning, so that everyone in our division gets the benefit of the morning “state of Iraq” briefing that is shown to General Petraeus. And actually, it’s been pretty good to see it, especially because he’s been exceptionally chatty as he watches it and he’s always making comments about what he wants us to be doing out here, and how he wants us to change things, and so on. Because General Casey had been around here for years, he was pretty used to seeing the morning briefing and generally didn’t have a lot to say, so this has been informative.

However, it means that I need to get up earlier. And since I naturally wake up around 7, an earlier time to rise means an alarm (I use my digital watch alarm; our plugs around here are European-style, so even though I brought my clock-radio with me, I’d have to have a converter to plug it in). Getting up in the before-7 range also means that I move even MORE slowly in the morning, so I have to get up around 6:20 in order to know I’ll be ready to be at work on time.

And it’s funny, but over the course of the week, I was actually getting tired. I realize, now, that part of my problem with sleeping, before this, is that I was actually getting enough sleep, making it hard to fall asleep at night. Now I don’t have that problem; I’m usually exhausted and pass out when I hit the pillow, dream hard and wake unhappily to the sound of my watch alarm. (I have never been a chirpy morning person; I definitely need my space at that time of day.)

My only real bone of contention with this whole earlier-morning deal is that it should turn into earlier nights, but to a person, everyone has been staying in the office at least as long as they did before, and in some cases, an hour or two longer. I realized that my typical hours this week were 7:15 a.m. to 10:15 p.m. Wow; when I get back to a normal workweek, I’m not sure I’m going to feel like I’m actually working anymore!