Friday, September 4, 2009

The Book of Days III: Back in the Saddle

Copyright 2009- All Rights Reserved

No matter if I’ve been out of town or not, transitioning back from summer vacation into teaching the fall semester of college is usually easy. I always have my syllabus copied and ready for each class since the copy machine is subject to break down from last minute overuse by instructors. No hassle. No frazzle. But…this time was different. I had to cope with an unexpected problem that started almost as soon as I landed in L. A.—jet lag. I haven’t really been plagued with jet lag before last week and it took me by surprise. Had I known that it would show up, I’d have made some changes in coming back to town.

Time zone change. Jet lag is born out of crossing time zones. Crossing time zones throws off the biological clock and upsets the body’s natural patterns and rhythms based on day and night, sunrise and sunset. According to what I later found out, a two hour change isn’t too bad but a three hour change is trouble. I had gone through a three hour change coming home from vacationing all summer down south. My watch said that I’d landed at 3 p.m. Sunday afternoon but my body recognized the time as 6 p.m. It was ready to wind down but now that I was home, there was way too much for me to do to give in to that.

My first class was going to be at 9 a.m. the next day and I had to get ready, jet lag or not. In the sixteen hours between my plane landing and walking into the classroom, I greeted my neighbors who’d kept watch on my mail and my apartment, unpacked and put my clothes away, drove to the grocery store for food, put my dinner together and ate, made some telephone calls, put my classroom materials in my pack bag, laid out my clothes, checked a box full of mail accumulated over three months, and, finally, at 10 p.m., I went to bed. I didn’t sleep well—not a good thing; still, I got up at 6:30 a.m. the next morning. Although I was feeling tired, I walked my neighbor’s dogs for 10 minutes (my usual morning exercise routine), fixed and ate my breakfast, bathed, dressed, and left for work.

For three months, my days had started around 10:30 or 11 in the morning and I’d enjoyed living life at a decidedly slower pace. No more. Here I was back to alarm clocks, time schedules, negotiating morning traffic, and setting myself up to do or accomplish entirely too many things in one twenty-four hour period. As I drove to work, I heard on the radio that the weather would be in the upper 90’s. Great. I thought I’d left that kind of weather in Georgia. But here it was again! By the time I got through my classes, I was definitely feeling jet lag symptoms—grogginess, tiredness , mild depression, and disorientation. The heat made things worse and I asked myself a thousand times what I’d been thinking of when I’d booked a plane back without giving myself a day or two to rest before going to work.

I was fading away by Monday evening and I knew I had to find a solution…quick, fast, and in a hurry. Logic and a little internet research helped me come up with a plan. What I decided to do was slow way down for the rest of the week, stay in a cool place more often than not, take afternoon naps and cool baths at night, eat light meals, and put a limit on the kind of exercise I’d do every day for a week. It’s worked pretty well. Next time I travel, though, I’ll find out what other things I can do to minimize jet lag. That includes coming back home a couple of days earlier, not a few hours before I have to go to work.

Jet lag made it a bit harder and longer that first week to shift back into L.A.’s fast lane. I do miss the lazy days of summer, the sound my “Songbird” singing me awake every morning, my leisurely breakfast each morning with my summer hostess. Oh, well. Time to take my sweet memories of summer into fall and the new school year. It’s back in the saddle for me.