A guest post by Tracy Casper Lang, editor, director, writer, storyteller
For the last eight plus years, I have worked overnights surrounded by images of protests, politics, weather, and war. I am not a night owl. I was never the kind of college student who “pulled all-nighters.” I don’t even really like the dark.
So, how is it, then, that my life now revolves around the sleep and the planning and the upside-down-ness that this work schedule requires?
I guess it all started with working in TV news. While I certainly clocked some long hours on the entertainment side of things, news is a 24-hour, 7 days a week endeavor. So, as a relative newbie on the news front—just one other news job before my current one as an Editor/Technician at a division of CBS News—I wasn’t particularly surprised to be called upon to work the overnight. It was “paying my dues,” as it were. (Yes, paying your dues is not just for twenty-two year olds—but that’s a discussion for another day). Having seen firsthand the cold world of unemployment, I was more than happy to do that, even if I was far from 22, and far past my first job.
So, about 8 years ago, I began teaching myself to sleep in the daylight (no blackout curtains, but sometimes a sleep mask), and I began to leave home each evening, a few hours after dinner. I would enter the very quiet CBS Broadcast Center lobby, and then the fairly empty newsroom, not quite knowing whether to say good night or good morning. And for the next 8 hours, I would work with a tiny team to generate the b-roll and promos and packages, and everything in between, that would fill the morning shows on CBS and other stations across the country and the world. Some nights, our tiny team was taxed to the fullest (after all, news in many parts of the world is happening during what for us is the middle of the night). Other nights, there was far too much time to compare notes on our sleep schedules (Turns out some people can actually sleep a straight eight hours during the day!). And as the sun was brightening, and the newsroom was filling up, I would re-enter a world of people making their way TO work.
When I started all this, I wondered if my family would survive. Well, my kids weren’t babies, and they had survived my working 14-16 hour soap opera days. And my husband had seen me both come home from long workdays and sit home on the couch unemployed. So, I’d like to think he was game for whatever it took. These days, I appreciate being home during the day to field crises and run errands and go to appointments—in some ways, all the things that being a stay-at-home mom might have bought me many years ago.
And my own survival? In some ways, that has been a day to day question for close to 9 years. In the beginning, there were days when I navigated life like a ghost. And days when I attempted to accomplish so much in the daylight that my time at work became a battle just to stay awake through the busy and not-so-busy hours.
These days, I happily sleep for a few hours after work, and I try to sleep, just as happily, for a few hours before work. Am I bummed that I can’t sit longer at the dinner table? That I can’t stay up to watch the full baseball game, not just the first few innings? Perhaps. And, yet, here I am, all these years in, still heading to work as late night TV is starting, and heading home as the morning shows are ending. And making a life in between that is guided by scheduled naps and enforced meal times, with assorted errands and self-care in between.
So, what’s the takeaway? There are actually a bunch of them that are probably largely transferable to all sorts of roles in this crazy business in which we work. Here are a few:
- We are capable of more than what we have done before, and more than what we thought we’d be capable of.
- We are allowed to make career choices that may fit the moment, even if they don’t fit the forever.
- We can always find things to learn, even when we might think we already know enough.
If you had told me ten years ago that I’d be living the overnight life, I would never have believed I could, much less would, make that choice for more than just a few nights. But now, almost nine years in, I continue to be curious, and adaptable, and strong. (Well, as long as I nap enough). I am also available during the day for appointments, kid support, and cooking dinner.
And for me, right now, that’s the news—and not a bad use of my 24/7.
