Yes, it actually is daylight.
It is not a metaphorical light at the end of the tunnel after a hard struggle. This light spells doom and illuminates failure.
The past 36 hours have seen me sleeping for a mere 7 hours. Ordinarily, this is not extraordinary. However, it is currently half past seven in the morning, and I've spent the last four hours attempting to return to sleep after a short midnight-to-3AM stint, which came only after the stimulants mercifully filtered out of my system.
So here I sit, with the German Grand Prix qualifying playing off my DVR while I write a blog post about it. ...Because apparently in this day and age, that's what all insomniacs become these days: bloggers.
Oh, wait... blogging is dead now, and they're all on Twitter.
It's not as if yesterday wasn't tiring, either. I arrived to work after leaving that very building at 3AM the night before, having begrudgingly covered two people's shifts at the same time, with my obsessive nature taking over and spending an hour longer than they would have done cleaning... Wait, where did this sentence start? Yesterday morning, okay. Sold-out show with a twist: unique cocktails on special, meaning extra prep work, which my fellow bartender was doing for one of them while I did all the rest.
Only half an hour to do all this. Actually less, because the MOD wanted to open early without telling anyone. So people are pouring in and I'm only half done with the other bartender MIA as far as I know. Next thing I know, four servers are suddenly behind my bar setting up, when I really only wanted one bartender who knew what to do. No offense to the servers, but they don't do this every day, and I really don't have time to answer questions.
Did I mention just four hours of sleep the night before? Well, if not, you're probably better rested than I am and you did the math already.
Oh, look. Lewis Hamilton just crashed. Brake failure. Mercedes boys might want to look at that.
But the event, thankfully, went smoothly. I've done busy without decent rest plenty of times after three years, especially when I was working two jobs. The only real problems came when a manager would relay an instruction to the other bartender, and I can't hear the contents of said instruction. Working in the same setting long enough, you just know what instructions sound like as opposed to conversations or general comments. I then break my concentration (risky move) to try and get someone to repeat what was said.
I had one ray of hope: the following show was going to be slow. I asked the other bartender if he was cool with working that show solo so I could get a smidge of rest. "Um, they're switching me to server and sending a bunch of them home."
My brain fails to compute this.
He explains this a second time and I immediately go to 7-11 for energy drinks.
Stimulants keep me awake, but alertness is another matter. I'm now on autopilot for the rest of the day. It's enough to bartend a half-capacity crowd solo, receiving minimal help from other staff. The weird thing I noticed, looking back, was that muscle memory seems unaffected by how awake you are. Rotating a shaker tin on my palm and tossing a bottle in the air to get a better grip work as smoothly as ever.
Why do all energy drinks taste terrible? With such a crowded market, why is no one working on that?
Relief comes when my GM tells me they've got it and sends me home. A shower, pizza delivery, and whiskey give me those three hours I was talking about earlier.
But why am I up now? Logic dictates I should be out like a coma patient. My roommate can pass out virtually anywhere. Where's my coma?
I'm getting a headache now. That's enough writing.