I went to the time travellers’ ball on Saturday night - it was so much fun!
I had heard that everyone who attends really goes all out on the costumes and they were right. Some of the outfits were so extra and I spent most of the evening telling strangers how amazing they looked.
The idea behind the ball is that you can choose to wear any period of costume as long as you double down on your creation. They have a theme each year and this year it was Belle Époque https://www.eventfinda.co.nz/2023/the-time-travellers-ball-2023/featherston
I was never going to have a late night because my meds kick in around 9.30pm and then I turn into a pumpkin who cannot string a sentence together. Greg came and grabbed me and I left exactly when I was having the most fun which is precisely when we should all leave.
I have had issues with time since this journey started but I feel like I live inside the time traveller’s ball at the moment. I simply have no clue anymore where I sit with regards to time. Last night Greg asked if I was ready for bed and in my head, it was still 6pm when it was actually well after 9pm.
I feel a bit like I am a professional traveller who is constantly in the wrong time zone. If I allowed my body to have its way, I would sleep most of the day and would be up all night.
Time grounds and centres us, it helps us have a framework in which to live around. It’s such a constant thing time - we spend each day trying to fit as much as we can into its confines and then rinse and repeat.
I get the sense that going forward time and I will begin to part ways even more than we are now. I am so thankful that I am surrounded by Mr Jobs creations - My iPhone and iPad tell me constantly what month I am in and which specific day it is. They also tell me the time which again helps ground me in whatever day I am traversing.
I spend a few hours most nights writing, reading and listening to music. I am so blessed to share a bed with a man who is a professional sleeper. Greg can sleep through almost anything! I tend to do these activities between 2am till 5am and I’ve worked it so that I don’t wake up Gabe either. I have become a very good stealthy time traveller who takes advantage of when my brain is awake.
I worked on remote mine sites in Western Australia where everyone works twelve-hour shifts from six until six. It only takes a few weeks of working twelve-hour days for your body to adjust. I only worked during the 6am to 6pm day shift but the majority of our staff worked for a week doing days and then had a swing day before doing another week of night shifts.
You could easily spot people on their swing shift day, they literally looked out of time compared to the rest of us. If you ever want to see a live zombie visit a mine site on swing shift day, true story.
Part of my role was flying all the engineering personnel to and from the remote mine site via our company jet (don’t get too excited it was just like a standard Air NZ jet). This was a tricky proposition because we all had different rosters.
Most of the managers worked five days on and four days off. Some of our contractors did nine days on and five days off. The majority of us did even time which meant two weeks on site and two weeks off. The hardest workers on site were the cleaners and kitchen staff from P&O who arrange all the staff on cruise ships. They did six weeks on site with a mere two weeks off. The Excel spreadsheet that I used to track all those different rosters was impressive and I held the record for correct/complete itinerates site wide and it took four years for someone to beat me.
While working on that mine I discovered that our body clocks will continue to try to ground us to the day and night scenario for up to ten years. After that it literally breaks and stops centring us to the correct time. I remember watching a couple of older men go “Aahh” when this information was disclosed and you could tell it was the bit of missing piece, they needed to make sense of what was happening to them. The only ‘cure’ for this condition is to stop shift work and only work during the day. Even then its never really cured and these individuals will have severe sleep issues for the rest of their lives.
I am currently like a seasoned shift worker whose internal clock has been damaged due to overuse. Time is something that usually binds us together - the majority of us use our daylight hours for our various activities both work and play.
We even get confused by time together - there is always that bit between Boxing Day and New Year’s Eve when most of us have no idea what day of the week it is. Well, that is what it’s like in my head almost all the time, unsure of the date, day or time of day.
It’s incredible what we get accustomed to isn’t it? I remember thinking to myself about six weeks into lockdown that I was dealing with this global pandemic quite well. Like most of us lockdown came as a shock to me. I was aware of some kind of Illness happening overseas but before I knew it, we were doing shop to last us weeks and my mum had moved in with us for an indeterminate length of time. I remember the first time I saw a COVID add on my iPad, it was terrifying, because it made it real. I think up until that moment I was kind of hoping it was all a bad dream.
My point is that none of us had ever lived through a pandemic but on the whole we Kiwis did a great job and came out of it vaccinated and ready for whatever came next. We coped with an unknown variable and came out the other side in one piece - if forever changed.
My internal clock might have broken but I still want to spend my time with those that I love. They all work day shifts and so I need to keep myself centred around the daylight hours where possible. Naps are beginning to look like necessary practice - I just need to get used to that.
Use your time wisely today.