I’m pretty annoyed with my job right now. I know, I know: welcome to the club. And really, what should one expect from a soul-sucking retail hellhole that blights the very land it stands on, making Mordor look like Tahiti (it’s a magical place) by comparison?

Alright, that last statement was largely hyperbole. My job isn’t that bad, especially given how bad working retail has the potential to be. But there a certain things that are really starting to grate on me, from the ever-changing schedule to the seemingly-constant “panic mode” and the early mornings.

Oh, how I’m growing to hate those early mornings.

Before I started my current job, I hadn’t really had to think about whether I was a night owl or a morning person. Sure, I would stay up late, sometimes past midnight, but I would get up the next day for work or class by 8am. Both my parents seemed to be morning people, but my brother definitely wasn’t (some of that may have been your basic teenage lethargy, but I bet it still holds. Love ya, buddy). So in comparison to him, I was definitely a morning person.

But my current job is forcing me to rethink that assessment of myself. After all, getting up at 4am to be at work by 5h (4h15 on Saturdays!) is different than having to make an 8am class every other day. I’ve gotten pretty good at rolling out of bed and making it to work on time with the least possible margin; at a previous job, I could wake up at 6h45 and be there by 7am. And I’ve got a good alarm, so getting up really isn’t the issue. What’s crimping my style is having to go to bed so early.

Without any external stimuli, I seem to naturally wake up around 7. For a full eight hours of sleep, this would mean I would have to be in bed by 11, with midnight not being too much of a stretch. Waking up at 4am, however, means I would have to be asleep by 8pm the night before. And given that it takes me a while to fall asleep, I’d have to be in bed by 7h or 7h30. Frankly, that’s not realistic for several reasons.

For one, I’m just not used to going to bed that early. In fact, most of my hobbies keep me up until at least 9 or 10 (especially on fighter practice nights). Second, it would mean having to go to bed pretty much right after dinner (if I wanted to hold any hope of having dinner with my girlfriend). Which brings us to the third point: my girlfriend works a standard 8 to 5(ish) job, which means the only time we get to spend together during the work week is after dinner. Account for the fact that we’re both introverts and need time to ourselves, that would leave practically no time to see each other. And that’s not acceptable.

So yeah, while this isn’t a new issue, I just realized that I have a platform where I can complain about things. It is getting really annoying, but of course I don’t see an easy solution presenting itself any time soon. I’ve been trying to be in bed by 9 as a compromise, but that easily bleeds into 9h30 and 10pm, which leaves me too tired after work to do anything productive.