By the Light of the Moon

A night owl by trade

The whole thing was surreal and dreamlike. Sitting in a worn leather armchair, observation minutes in hand, keeping as quiet as possible, I was working nights and felt subterranean, or was it subterfuge? The whole world’s fast asleep while I was in a private, secured facility with a duty to be wide-eyed and, in a sense, on guard. 

The work itself was seldom eventful. The bulk of the challenge was the reset to the long nocturnal hours.

As lone residential staff

I experienced working nights in the UK at two distinct engagements. 

One was working a month-on, month-off cycle of days and nights of 12-hour shifts. As you can imagine, sleep cycle hell. It would be about two and a half to three weeks in when I’d finally feel acclimated, and then it was over. That was a lone engagement. I was a one-man night staff for a two-story residential building. A sky-high caffeine intake and riding out one’s sense of exhaustion were non-negotiable to start with. Yet past the opening initiation rites, I had an office to myself, bright lighting, a kitchen, and writing to get on with. Undisturbed, alone, and in continued quiet, this was a safe haven to let the imagination run wild. Frankly, I’d be sullen and half-depressed when returning to daylight was next on the rotation. 

Never have I had such a raw sense of discovering golden, secret pockets of time and stealing those hours.

On the adolescent ward

The second was an entirely different deal tonally. I was working nights for about two and a half months at a time as a Senior Healthcare Assistant in an acute adolescent mental health ward. Duties, multifaceted, could include guarding safety and boundaries,  self-care and dignity within distress.

The drama was low, barring a rambunctious start and end to some shifts. Right when the staff changeover would take place, the whole ward could be spirited to test boundaries, literally and otherwise. But it was mainly being awake and alert for issues when the young people slept. Just that dynamic alone gave a parental vibe to it. Particularly when a circadian kick of tired would bloom to life: I’m awake so you can sleep. There felt some kind of undercurrent, an unspoken sacrifice to the work. All right … maybe coffee-drenched sleep deprivation colors your thinking and feeling, I’ll give you that. 

On returning from the fjords

After the UK nights, I worked my third and last night shift job in Norway, as land staff for cruises. I served as an Embarking/Disembarking Agent for retirees making trips in and out of the Oslo fjords. Suited and booted, I was the all-smiling, polite signpost on legs, working in hotels around Oslo. This was a job whose only drama hit when it came to hotel room sizes, since some guests were close to apoplectic about their demands. The shifts themselves were otherwise slow-burn and simple.

I’d be in charge of the early risers, to get people on a coach to catch flights back home. The logistics were straightforward, as the concierge was always helpful, kind, and polite.

It was more the invisible, sleuth-like status that waiting in hotel lobbies in the dead of night gave. The night itself lent an air of film noir mystery. Soft light caressed golden and felt surfaces with spotless floors. The morning staff arriving, the night staff taking off, and revelers of the night returning to rest or collapse. I felt witness to a part of life I kinda shouldn’t be privy to. Dressed up and available in the lobby, my own desk, but not part of the hotel staff really. Needed when necessary, but otherwise not exactly there. As cars passed by in the cold darkness, I walked around a warm glowing foyer, a footnote to the surrounding world. Then again, wouldn’t you know it, I might just have got a little bit of writing done…

A mythical groove where creativity flows freely

I was always a night owl as a younger man, just a part of trying to steal more of the day. The hours between midnight and 3 AM could feel like a mythical groove for creative freedom seldom found. 

Yes, across nightwork and prior insomnia, writing has typically come alive for me. In years since, I’ve come to learn this could well be absolute guff, and there may be nothing better for creativity than a good night’s sleep. However, I can miss those hours. I can miss that sense I was up when the world fell fast asleep. That among all the quiet, in anonymity, I was carving out and discovering something I didn’t even know was there. 

I can’t advise being a night owl for creativity or otherwise. It might just leave you with a rather contemptuous relationship with the early morning. Yet there was some indescribable romantic glow of the deep of night with eyes wide open. An anesthetic contentment in isolation? An accidental high from screwing up a circadian rhythm? A little false power trip from having something others didn’t? 

I don’t know, but there’s nothing quite like being a night owl by trade. For better or for worse, I’m yet to find anything that compares.