I feel like I had a pretty unproductive week. And I do my best to blame the fact that I was on for the week at work, but really, as much as I can whine and carry on that I was a little tired, looking back, I could have pushed forward and at least ticked off my tasks instead of sit at the computer screen not really doing much.

Disappointed in myself yet again this week. I need to find myself better methods to ensure that I complete what I had set out to do.

I’m productive at work though, so that’s not the issue. It’s the procrastination when I get home after work prior to jumping into bed. I can do better.

So, what DID I get up to with my time then?

Method for Breaking Sleep Routine

One thing that I and many others find hard about night shift, in particular with flexible shift work, where shifts can go from mornings to afternoons and vice versa every week, and one whole week can be a night shift with the weeks after being back to mornings/afternoons again is the damage is does to your routine and way of life.

It’s not at all the same as just being on night shift permanently, which that in itself has its own long-term effects on the human body. It’s 7 nights with a recovery day, and back into flexible rostering after nights.

Right now, due to resourcing issues, we are on minimum night shifts. Meaning, we do a night shift week, every 4th week.

So how do I tackle getting into the first night of night shifts after being on different hours and regular sleeping routines?

I use to just try and push the first night and not change anything - no extra sleep, just straight into night shift and try to stay awake on the first night.

This didn’t work. In actuality, it’s dangerous in my line of work in emergency services. We need to be awake, we need to not be fatigued and we need to have the mental capacity to deal with highly stressful situations.

Now, I will go out of my way, the night prior to my first night shift, to stay up as long as I can through the night. If that means movies or playing games, and drinking lots of , then so be it. I will do my best to stay away until between 5 and 7am the next morning. If I need a quick nap after that, I will give myself a 1 to 2 hour teaser nap and keep pushing through, doing activities with the family if I can.

I then aim to go to sleep around lunch time and get as much sleep as possible. Between 6 to 8 hours before waking up and getting ready for that first night shift.

It worked wonders for me last week, and I started my first night feeling fully rejuvenated and ready for the action - and glad I did, because the first night was quite a busy one that required focus, attention to detail and the ability to react!

In saying that, here in Australia it’s currently the end of Autumn and hitting the edge of winter. So nights are longer and days are colder. So it’s much easier to fall asleep rugged up, than it is sweating in the heat. I’ll get back to you all if I manage to keep this method up during the warmer months!

Beautiful Music & Guitar Playing

My daughter has been learning to play the guitar and has taken a fancy for finger picking vs using a pick for her playing, and her new tutor is doing well as teaching her.

With this, I went back to some old music I enjoy listening to and looked up Estas Tonne, to have my daughter listen to it and see what she thought.

It’s such beautiful music. Put on some headphones, close your eyes, listen, enjoy the story that unfolds.

Change of Milk

This week, I changed my milk supply. Exciting, right?

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I don’t know why I didn’t move to more expensive milk and organic milks until now. So much more creamy and tastier. Way more wholesome too.

I know I know, so exciting it was worthy of making the weekly recap. That, or I am finding anything to add to this week due to my utter laziness procrastinating at home when I am nights!

Camera Shopping

I’ve been looking exactly which camera I want to upgrade to for my photography, from the I am currently using.

Originally, I was thinking about the Sony A6700 ASP-C camera, which is a great purchase. But, if I am going to invest so much into a camera, why not full frame in that case. Especially since my focus in photography is currently and in particular, .

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One more day to go of ! Having a coffee now that I am home. So, other than that… I’ve been thinking about the I wish to purchase. And have decided to go with an instead of the . $2k price difference, but I don’t think I will regret it long-term.

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Sony A7RV

I’ve decided I will go with the Sony AR7V. It will be much more forgiving for me, and due to the fact that I can do macro with 61 megapixels and, if I find I need to, I have plenty of detail to be able to crop in and still get pristine images.

This purchase would last me a very long time. And I feel much more comfortable investing in some good lenses for a camera I own, over purchasing lenses for the Nikon I am currently using, which is not mine.

More Tech (M.2 SSD Upgrade)

I went ahead and purchased a new 2TB M.2 SSD to plug into my mothyerboard, which will replace the 512gb one I have currently.

This is so that when I do my photography and videos, I can drag all my raw and unedited content there for post-editing. This will allow me to do my photo editing in much fast than working with files over the network on the NAS. Same with video editing.

While shopping for this SSD, I realised however, that bus speeds have progressed on motherboards and that my motherboard is now quite ancient. They have PCIe 5.0 now, which would upgrade my SSD speed from around 3,000MB/s to 14,000MB/s!

That’s phenomenal. Unfortunately though, that means I need a motherboard upgrade that has PCIe M.2 slots. And that also means the CPU needs upgrading to the new socket types, as well as my memory going from DDR4 to DDR5. I can’t use the same CPU and memory in modern motherboards.

Anyway, I will keep my old 512gig M.2 SSD for when I do upgrade my motherboard in future. As I will be able to re-use that, I believe! And get myself one of those new fancy PCIe 5.0 versions for the editing drive. That’ll put me on 4 x M.2 drives by the time I am ready for the upgrade.

Conclusion

Another week gone for 2025. Almost half way. Amazing how quick a year can escape you before you realise it’s gone.

Make the most of it everyone!