Re: Diva: Occupational Hazards

Sweet sleep, funny dream, la la land. Slowly, I wake up, smiling inwards as my body emerges from a well rested place. My eyes open and for the first instant, I am not sure where I am.

Eyes dart to the windows and at the faint hint of daylight I PANIC!!

Suddenly, thoughts swarm in my head; "What day is it?", "Is it Friday?", "No! I can only remember a Thursday". "It's got to be Friday and I've overslept!!" "The driver and Arthur have come and tried to reach me, but I switched my phone off and now they've left me & I've missed work and I'm in BIG trouble!!! Oh my goodness!!!!" My pulse increases and I feel like I would be sick. Then it hits me.

I do not have a complete memory of Thursday (and I don't happen to be friends with 'the bottle'), so there was a gap between Thursday afternoon when I slept off on my Sidney Sheldon emotional escape and Thursday night's off-to-bed-routine (if I'm honest about having one)?

It HAD to be Thursday evening! As I reach for my little secretary, the one who schedules appointments and takes your e-mails, twitter and face book messages, I say a short prayer in my mind. As I reach for the blackberry, it all comes back to me. I had gone to bed hungry, deciding to eat after my nap.

It takes my body only 2 seconds to realize it's still Thursday evening, and what turned out to be such sweet sleep had toyed with my brain.

......and 15 minutes for the shock to wear out.

Now, my job requires a very early start. I remember telling my Mother in that idealistic attitude and all-knowing tone of mine; "I don't like nine to five jobs. I would never take a job that makes me get out of bed before 5.30".... Now, a few years later, though I have quit the 9-5 train, I do wake up at 4am every day to resume work at 5am. My body has lost ownership of her routine and the 'little secretary' has taken over. Alarms here, notes and reminders there.

A minute version of paranoia has hit me and my prevailing thoughts are not be late for work, trying not to keep Arthur (my co-host on the Morning Drive) and the driver waiting when they come to pick me up, the fact that it would be fatal to oversleep, what to do for my listeners.....the list is endless. In the end, I under-sleep and sometimes get cranky.

I've learnt to perform without my beauty sleep and I'm really not doing badly.

However, in spite of these hazards I find that I'd rather wake up at 3.48am to do a job that I love, than wake up at 7.30am to one I endure.