Consistency
Hey! Just wanted to let you know I’ve got a Patreon where I write things you might be interested in. This is the first part of one of those things, with a link down below to read it in full. It’d be really neat if you headed on over there to check out the rest!
Until recently, it never occurred to me that in the ten years I’ve worked, I’ve never had a normal schedule. A “9-to-5,” some might call it. There was the job where the scheduling was consistently 5 days a week, but never at normal times. It was either 3pm-11pm or 11pm-7:30am. There have been the jobs where I’ve consistently worked both from 6am until 10pm Monday through Wednesday, then 6am until 10pm Friday and Saturday. But never just one job, Monday through Friday, during normal business hours, for just 8 hours a day.
This realization occurred when I was offered the opportunity to transfer from my current store to another one. With the transfer, I would get a schedule of 8am to 4pm, Monday through Friday. The realization hit me like when my cat jumps on my stomach while I’m sleeping because he mistook my breathing for a small animal under the sheets that he must kill.
I found myself dreaming of the possibilities: I could be home at a normal time every day. I’d get two days off in a row, and they’d be weekends. Weekends! I could have a social life. I could have dinner at the same time every day. I could even go out of town to visit friends! I could get 8 hours of sleep every single night, if I felt like it. A set “laundry day.” The ability to make plans without needing to wait for that week’s schedule to come out. The ability to keepplans. Knowing exactly what my paycheck will look like, because it’s exactly the same every week. No more clopens (closing shift followed by an opening shift). The mental space to work on projects. A consistent, healthy sleep schedule. The promise of consistency across every aspect of my life.
And then on my last day before the transfer, just like that:
