Body Clock! What Body Clock?

I went to Aruba a couple of weeks ago on a week-long layover and got back last weekend, and as it was a 7 day layover we have to have three days off to get back to “normal”. Come Wednesday night I was having real difficulty getting to sleep before going back to do my first flight after the trip. Try as I might I just couldn’t fall asleep: tv on in the background, tv off, music on, music off, eye mask on when the sun started coming up. None of it worked and I ended up going in for a 13 hour day with no sleep, and oddly enough I felt fine.

I got home, relaxed for an hour then slept for 8 hours before getting up for another 12 hour day and felt rough as boots! I knew that I hadn’t caught up with the jet lag-induced insomnia from the night before, and also knew that having two more flights ahead of me on minimum rest (around eleven hours from shift to shift) I was really going to struggle.

Anyway, after my last flight on the Saturday I knew I had two days off to try and play catch up, and ended up sleeping through til 1300 on the Sunday which meant I stood no chance of sleeping tonight, hence me blogging this at 0300!!

I now face a bit of a dilemma. Do I go to bed and try and get up at around 0900 in the hope that I’m tired enough to sleep before my 15 hour day on Wednesday, or do I push through and stay up through to tonight?

Based on past experience this can go three ways: it will go as planned, I’ll fall asleep at some point before lunch and screw any chance of sleeping tonight, or I’ll end up in that odd place where I should be tired tonight, but aren’t.

And so this leads me into the title of this little blog. Cabin Crew wave goodbye to their body clock not long into their career. We’re so accustomed to working at the oddest hours and fighting our circadian rhythm that it no longer exists, or at least as good as doesn’t. We push through that tiredness barrier so often that we do it involuntary (and usually when we least want to), we have such odd sleep patterns and can operate on little sleep for days on end that it catches up with us and has us so drained that a meteor crashing into our bedrooms wouldn’t wake us up from our marathon catch up sleep.

Anyone who thinks that flying is glamourous should consider this, along with a long list of other reasons.

I’m now off to make a coffee and try to figure out how to keep myself awake and entertained until the sun comes up and the rest of the non-flyer people start their daily lives.

Wish me luck!!!!