Finding the balance

Night shifts suck

Every time that I wake up from by break in the middle of a 12 hour night shift, I wash my face and brush my teeth and see my face in the mirror. I look grey, yellow, pale and haggard. My body screams that it is the wrong time to be awake. My brain is still in some kind of delta phase, not really able to think clearly yet. Depending what time I have taken my break there may still be four or five hours left in the shift.

I work in the Maritime Rescue Co-ordination Centre (MRCC) at Falmouth, Cornwall, UK. As the name suggests, we co-ordinate search-and-rescue along the coast of Cornwall, west Devon and the Isles of Scilly. When there are incidents at sea or on the coast and we are active, this involves tasking lifeboats, cliff rescue teams, helicopters and working in conjunction with police, ambulance and sometimes mountain rescue. In summer months when there are a lot of tourists and people sailing, it is often very busy. In the winter it can be much quieter, but due to the stormy weather, when things go wrong in winter, they are often much more serious. Usually in the early morning winter months it is quiet and all we are doing is taking reports from the large oil tankers or container ships passing through the traffic separation scheme off Land’s End. I try to do some study or revision during the quiet hours, but often just staying awake and alert is an effort in itself.

The work

We work in front of four large computer monitors each, which display all of our mapping software and the program we use to coordinate and record search-and-rescue activities, with a fifth screen for our communications terminal which allows us to monitor and transmit from radio masts around the coastline. It is exciting, and terrifying – when it is busy we can be coordinating four or five rescues at a time, ranging from walkers on the South West Coast Path who have broken an ankle, yachts which have broken down offshore, assisting police with missing person searches, people trapped on rocks or cliffs as the tide comes in, surfers or swimmers being dragged out in rips, lost children on busy beaches, inexperienced paddleboarders caught in gusty offshore winds, reports of divers who have not come to the surface when and where they were expected, or large commercial vessels which have lost engine power and need to be assisted by a tug to get safely into a port. There is always a buzz of adrenaline when a 999 call comes in, and time can fly as we work together as a team to collate data and organise and execute an appropriate response.

I do find it a bit exhausting, and the nature of the work means that there is an inherent stress involved. In the summer I dread going to work because I never know what is going to happen – there could be five jobs or there could be fifteen. There can be times when a rescuer cannot get on scene quickly enough. So there is an element of trauma involved as well. I found that my sleep was affected and sometimes I will have nightmares of the red 999 button buzzing on my comms terminal.

Night shifts in winter are usually when it is quietest. It can feel very relaxed and we will often chat and share stories as the night passes. Staying awake feels OK, I am used to it from sailing and keeping night watch, and from the times in the monastery when we would stay up late on the full and new moon nights, chanting and meditating. It is the two days after the nights shifts that I find really difficult. In the first couple of hours of the morning I feel kind of elated, spacy and calm as my circadian rhythm kicks back in and the day brightens. Then by 11am I am really knocked out, it affects my personality, I eat all kinds of random things, I feel grumpy, moody and despondent. I sleep as much as I can, when I can.

The sleep circus

We do two twelve hour day shifts (7am-7pm), then two twelve hour night shifts (7pm-7am) and have four days off (actually three and a half as we finish work at 7am on the first day off). It means we work to an eight-day week instead of a seven day week. So last round my work week started on a Friday morning, this week it will start on a Saturday morning. Once I have rested it is really nice to have three full days off. it means that I have a lot of freedom and free time. However the down side is that there are many evenings where I cannot go to an evening class. I also have only half of my weekends free in any given year (apart from annual leave). And the cumulative effect of lots of night shifts is quite exhausting and batters my sleep patterns. Sometimes I am waking up at 6am to go to work, sometimes going to bed at 9am after work, sometimes wide awake during the day when I want to be asleep, sometimes tired at night when I want to be awake.

In terms of keeping a meditation and yoga practice going, I find this one of the most challenging things. I can’t always go to the regular classes I used to go to, either because I have work in the evenings or it has started by the time I have finished work. I wake up at different times and need to sleep different amounts almost every day of the week. So it feels almost impossible to have a routine where I wake up at a certain time, do a yoga pose or two, sit in meditation, journal, drink tea, plan my day. The typical mindful morning that we all aspire to seems just out of reach.

Seeing the positives

What I have been trying to learn to do is appreciate the free time and opportunity that my schedule does offer me. On Sunday I was able to attend a meditation group at the nearby village hall. On Tuesday evenings I can sometimes make it to the meditation group we have started at a friends house. On weekdays I am often off work while others are busy, and I can go for a surf when there are not so many people out. When I do take annual leave, because of the four days on, four days off, four days on pattern I can take four days of leave and have twelve days in total off. This would allow me enough time to attend a meditation retreat.

One of the nicest perks of the job is where we work, on the end of Pendennis headland, nestled underneath the old WWII artillery position overlooking the mouth of the harbour. There is a beautiful view over the sea, and on calm days we sometimes see dolphins coming into the bay. On my lunchbreak I can make it out for a run, or in the summer a swim. A few times there has been a punchy South East wind swell and I have had time for a surf at Gylly or Swanpool beach before rushing back to the Ops room.

Finding the sweet spot

Overall, at the moment the challenge seems to be about keeping perspective and finding the balance between difficulty and opportunity. The answer to finding the right approach to how we can find peace of mind is often in how we frame the question. We can’t always find that magic sweet spot in our lives where everything is lined up and we are in a constant state of flow. Meditation practice is about accepting things as they are, not trying to have things perfect. Dealing with this in our daily lives provides a firm foundation for approaching bigger questions in our spiritual lives, how we deal with things that are beyond our control or too big for us to manage. In the forest tradition the teachers would say, ‘If it comes low, jump over it, if it comes high, duck under it’. Being able to deal with unexpected circumstances with coolness and resolve was a highly valued trait for forest monastics. There was an understanding that ‘this too shall pass’. A situation had to be faced calmly and endured, but always with the understanding that it was not forever. If we can approach meditation in this way, without expecting it to be perfect, then we can find the five or ten minutes when we are free to stretch or sit quietly. Finding as much balance as we can helps us to ground and be more prepared, better able to deal with what life gives us.