Saturday, October 28, 2017

Just life stuff





Yes indeed, I have been casting a mighty small internet shadow of late. As I write this I'm not even sure when my last blog post was. As it turns out, I can check. It were October 10, so 18 days ago.

So a couple of things. I started a new winter job which is a night job at a cornvenience store. I used to work nights a lot, and I always liked working nights. This winter I will have something to do other than sit on my fundament eating bonbons and complaining about everything, and extra money will magically appear in my banque account.

By the by, there've been a surprising number of folks horrified by my decision to take employment in a position which is so, so beneath my station. That puzzled me for a bit, but then I realized (was reminded?) that there are a lot of people in the world who see their fellows as objects rather than as real, live, people. Objects are for using and manipulating and categorizing, and a great many people simply cannot abide having independent and self aware objects in their lives.

But I digress.

As it turns out, I am not quite the same fellow I recall from my youthful days of working nights. Or perhaps I am, and I've simply developed a selective memory regarding the impact of fatigue and disrupted circadian rhythms.

Either way, switching to a night-based existence has been a bit of a challenge. A complicating factor has been my assignment to the occasional 3-11 shift, necessitated by staffing disruptions at the store.

Be that as it may, the shifts have begun to steady out and I've managed to shift my biorhythms in the right direction.

So it's been a bit of a challenge. As for my online presence, I was in the process of pulling back from less salubrious aspects of the connected life anyway, and many days away from the interwebs and plugged into the local night realm has allowed me a lot of time to cogitate.

There's a lot of danger, I believe, in this electronic communication business. I know from my own experience that it can sing a siren song of egocentrism and lead me down the path of thinking that those I communicate with are, like the laptop screen, two dimensional constructs that cease to exist when I close the lid. To combat this danger, I need to take a more thoughtful and ethical approach to my interweb dealings.

I'm not entirely sure how I'll do this, but I'll figure it out.

After I get some sleep...

19 comments:

  1. Well and we were worried and all.

    Glad to see you back at it, such as it is and we'll take whatever you have to offer.

    :)

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  2. Just glad to hear that you are well.

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  3. Missed y'all and was starting to worry.
    Thought maybe you were busy knitting sweaters for the cattle to keep them warm this winter...
    I am NOT a night person but I admire those who can do it.
    John S.

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    1. Thanks John. Nothing to admire in my case, I'm not that good at it.

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  4. I always read your stuff on the thrird shift, so it's nice to know someone else is out there.

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    1. You and me and the night people... :)

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    2. Totally different world on the night shift- sure does provide another perspective of life. I've a lot of memories of that shift when I worked at a 7-Eleven. Not sure I could adjust to it today.

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  5. As for working in a convenience store, I worked in one on the overnight/grave/third shift also. As long as you are not trying to work both day and night, you should regain your balance soon. Happy to read that it was just being busy that prevented blogging, some of us are worry-warts. Always happy to read whatever you have time to post.

    Paul L. Quandt

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    1. I'm starting to get my feets back on the ground so far as my day/night/sleeping schedule goes. Don't remember it being this hard when I was younger but I may have an idealized memory of those days.

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  6. That store makes some good hamburgers in the morning.

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    1. Sure sell a lot of them. Fortunately for the health of the customers they don't let me cook. :)

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  7. Time to reflect is a good thing. I've always wondered how some folks are able to generate pages of text and prose day in and day out. Particularly bloggers who's first job in life wasn't as an English major or journalist.

    /
    L.J.

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  8. What are your thoughts, on smaller herds makes great sense to me...
    https://youtu.be/bPsw3VfjH8s

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  9. I took a temporary job as a night clerk in a c-store.
    I ended up working for the company for almost 14 years.
    They treated me very well most of the time.
    I never quite adjusted to working evening and night shifts... or having Wednesday and Thursday for days off.

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  10. Lived there, a lot, so, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, etc.
    who in the world comes in after o'dark 30? I would think it the best grad school job in the universe except my detailer offered me, a man on his way out of the navy, a ship that never gets underway and never deploys (perfect for grad student) except, CNO test platform and also 9 months deployed to PG on account of a rain of serpents or something. That damned ship was underway almost every single day!

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  11. I've noticed your absence from the web. I certainly enjoyed your post which I accessed from FB. It was quite a while before I realized that you were not posting the link. I'm with Chris, I'll adjust my read to access w/o the link and enjoy what I get. Hope all is well with you and yours.

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  12. As usual, great stuff from you Shaun and to all the other commenters. I'm an inconspicuous fly on the wall. I always walk away from these posts/blogs/comments whatever they are feeling more full and a bit better about the shiskstorm I live in.

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