Night life

In the past, after briefly trying out how it was like to work in an inbound call center (out of boredom, confusion and curiosity), I’ve sworn on my own sweet, pathetic life that I’d never work on night shifts ever again. Never again. I gave it a good try back then, but I guess it just wasn’t for me. I was good at it, it was fun while it lasted, I learned a lot, too, but it almost killed me. After only a few months, I was fatigued, emotionally unstable, and burnt out. So no, never again, I told myself with finality, resolute conviction and self-righteous, obstinate pride, would I allow myself to go through such needless anguish, corporal punishment and torture just so I’d have some money to call my own salary. It’s just a terrible, terrible way of living, scavenging for money and trying to earn a decent living while slowly dying in the excruciating, exhausting process as well. That was it. I didn’t want to die young or live the rest of my life in a depressing mental institution. So I decided to put my corporate night life on permanent retirement from then on.

Well I guess as long as you're alive you can never really say never, because now I find myself eating (and choking on) my own fierce words.

Since last week, the daytime work schedule I’ve been comfortably on for the past year has been changed, and I’m suddenly back to working nights again. Of course if I really wanted to I could have just made a big, explosive, award-winning dramatic scene, resigned and stopped working altogether. Working in an outbound call center is a different, more profound kind of suffering compared to working for one that takes inbound calls. Instead of fighting off sleepiness at dawn, sitting on a swivel chair in a cold air-conditioned office, chit-chatting with seatmates while waiting for calls to be routed to your computer and then resolving irate clients’ issues while smiling quietly at their hurtful insults, you are tasked to make calls and promote a certain product or, say, a company and its services. It is always a struggle, a constant battle to meet expectations and consistently produce output like sad and sick old hens in an egg factory that reeks of noxious ammonia. It’s very tiring. Not to mention now that I’m working nights, where my frail body is forced to realign itself with new, nocturnal concepts of time and space, and my clock has to turn the other way around, unlearning all that it has now mastered over the years. Despite the redundant statements I continuously make about how difficult the job is, especially now, for some reason, I’ve found the courage to just stick around, wait and see how things turn out.

When I started working in a call center years ago I discovered there was so much about the job that I wasn't prepared for just yet, and some things I didn't even expect I’d find myself face to face with. No amount of preparation would have prepared me for what I was going to go through. And I didn’t make any, anyway. I still feel the same way. However, since life has taken me down this path again, despite my efforts to the contrary, I see no wisdom in putting up resistance. And I’m tired of making such a big deal about it, either. Instead of complaining about how horrible working at night is, I’m instead trying my best to see the good in the night life, my newly revived night life. I’m learning to appreciate things the way they are now. And I find there are some good things in this after all. A lot of good things, actually, that I somehow missed the first time around. I guess the gift of hindsight becomes better and better over time.

I find it wonderful how, instead of leaving home as the rest of the world begins a day, you see how the world ends a day as you wake up to begin yours. It is an entirely new experience when you begin to live your life upside down. You begin to see things differently, like turning a detailed portrait on a different angle and seeing another perspective of the beautiful picture. Despite the initial strain of adjusting to the drastic change in the hours when I’m awake, I find that working nights gives me a fresh way of looking at things, a view that I possibly could not even get while I’m up in the day. For all I know it could all just be something brought about by my altered mental chemistry. I don’t know. Still, I find it quite a revelation.

In the morning, just as I go home even before the rainclouds wake up to wring themselves dry and flood the earth with their cold tears, the warm dawn begins to peak from the horizon, bringing with it a bright promise of new beginnings. It’s always great to be reminded that yesterday belongs in the past and with it all the things that happened then are now but memories. Everyday is always a chance to forget and start anew. As I go on the solemn journey home inside an old, rusty and rickety jeepney, I see the clarity of the things around us when they’re not yet blurred and obscured by the hurried traffic of everyday life. I am graced with the serenity of a mind not yet confronted by worry and mundane puzzlements and the lightness of a spirit not yet burdened with the rigorous demands of modern day survival. I feel the freedom from the misleading chaos and confusion we live with everyday, from the unimportant preoccupations that throw themselves at us as the day goes wearily on.

As I look outside, feeling the breeze kindly caress my face, I notice how the path that leads me home seems pleasantly strange, like a foreign insect of sorts that strays into our backyard one summer afternoon, even when I’ve passed the same roads for years. I see how differently things look in the dim light of daybreak, how peaceful this world could be if we all stayed indoors and slept all day. I realize then how there is so much to be happy about, how very little we truly appreciate all the good around us. The gentle early morning sunshine seems to give me a good dose of happiness that lasts quite a while. Even the midday traffic and the noontime heat seem unable to drain or irritate me.

The night life isn’t so bad after all. Especially the morning after.