Three in the morning
Notes from the back of a quiet rig, and what the in-between does to your attention.
The hardest thing about being on an overnight shift isn’t the work. It’s the in-between. You get a call at midnight, you run it, you come back to the bay, and then it’s two hours of nothing.
In that nothing, every small sound becomes a thing. The radio that never quite goes silent. The diesel cooling. Someone two bays over checking their watch. The compressors kicking on in the cooler.
The first few months, I tried to fight it. Bring a book. Watch something on my phone. Drink coffee until I forgot the time. None of it worked. The book stayed open on the same page for thirty minutes. The phone made me sleepier. The coffee just made the waiting jittery.
What works better, I’ve found, is not fighting it. Three in the morning is its own kind of attention. You don’t get it anywhere else. The next call is coming, and when it does you’ll be glad you weren’t halfway through an episode of something.
Most nights, the quiet is the work.