When I accepted the job offer to become a Lakewood Police
Agent, I knew I signed up for some heavy duty lifestyle changes. At the top of that list, I was concerned about
the impact it would have on my beloved sleep.
Most times, I fall asleep quickly and wake up refreshed, adrift with the quiet sound of the radio alarm
playing in the morning. Until this point
in my life, I have been fortunate enough to sleep soundly throughout the
night.
For the past 7 years I worked from my home and made my own
schedule. As a result, sleep has
been on my terms. Generally I awoke at 7 AM after a restful 8 hours of
sleep. Perhaps, if I got into an intense
television viewing marathon (“Chopped” – a competitive cooking show) and didn’t
get to bed at 2 AM, I could wake up for a 6 o'clock meeting knowing that I could
catch an afternoon nap. Unfortunately,
whether I liked it or not, things were about to change.
At the start of the police academy, I learned quickly that
waking up at my “normal” time was not going to happen. In order to be successful I would need a new
sleep schedule - lights out by 2200 hrs (what most of the rest of America calls
10 PM) and awake by 0500. Even though
class starts at 0800 and ends at 1700 (5 PM… Well, you get the idea – I’ve
begun the art of employing a cumbersome math equation whenever I tell time) there
were many things that needed to be accomplished outside of class that would
take up the majority of my free time.
Gone were the days of relaxing on the couch for an hour, watching TV and
eating a leisurely dinner.
Without a strict schedule, I would fall behind on my number
one priority of studying. Following
closely behind were the little but equally important tasks like boot polishing,
uniform pressing, street memorization and just plain staying awake through 8
hours of PowerPoint-driven lecture. I
also knew that intense instructor scrutiny of our fundamentals at the gun range,
and technique learned during arrest control were about to steepen the learning
curve. Shooting our pistols accurately
and searching suspects for deadly weapons are just two of the many areas that
require extreme mental clarity. They
were also two disciplines where lack of sleep could lead to catastrophic
consequences.
For the most part, my strict sleep schedule has worked out as
planned and I have been much more productive. Before class I study or review techniques and
after class I stay late to send emails, finish reports or get a workout in
while going over notes from the day. Best
of all, I avoid rush hour traffic which helps maintain my sanity. But with all of this change came some pit
falls and there has been one major downside to my newly found regimen.
Without fail, my internal alarm wakes me up between 5 and 30
minutes before 0500. In a strangely
sadistic way, it’s always the perfect amount of time to make going back to
sleep completely worthless. During the
week, I have grown to reluctantly embrace the extra minutes, utilizing it for
extra study time. Unfortunately, this
happens on the weekends when I could be catching
up on some much needed beauty sleep.
Invariably my eyes will open around 0500…there I go again, even when
referring to “my time”…and unless I am going on a skiing or fishing trip, I
can’t think of one good reason to be up before the sun rises on a Saturday or
Sunday morning.
Now that we have hit the halfway mark, I have comfortably
settled into my new routine. However, in
just three short months all of this will be turned on its head. What started out as a conventional “8-5” (0800
to 1700, to be precise) schedule will become chaos as I take the headfirst
plunge into the world of rookie police work.
Ten long hours plus overtime on graveyard shifts, working in the dark
morning hours and then attempting to sleep while the rest of the world is wide
awake and going about their lives. I
don’t anticipate that it will be an easy adjustment and potentially it will be
the most difficult of the changes to come my way. Perhaps with a little bit of luck and some
semblance of routine, I will be able to sleep soundly through the day.
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