The Longest Day of the Year

I am not built for mornings. This is not a quirky personality trait or something I say to sound relatable - my brain does not come online early. It resists alarms. Left to its own devices, it prefers a slow, dignified entry into the day, ideally with coffee, silence and no expectations.

Even so, in my previous job, I worked a 5:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. schedule for years. I liked my afternoons off and my boss worked in Minnesota, so the time difference aligned with his schedule; we got a LOT done before 8am Oregon time.

It was during the period after the pandemic, when offices reopened and everyone pretended they remembered how time worked. Every weekday, I got up while it was still dark and told myself the trade-off was worth it.

By the time I got home in the early afternoon, I felt finished. Not tired. Finished. Like the day had already used up whatever I had to give. I lived alone then. No one needed dinner. No one needed help with homework. There were no witnesses to my bad habits.

I slept on the couch a lot.

One summer evening, I came home especially drained. Around six o’clock in the evening, I sat down on the couch with the full intention of resting for a few minutes.

I woke up to fading orange skies – almost daylight.

I checked the clock. It said nine.

My body reacted instantly. I was late for work.

The panic hit before any thinking did. My heart sped up. That familiar rush of shame and urgency took over. I grabbed my phone and messaged my boss that I was on my way. No explanation. Just a quick, professional sentence sent with absolute confidence.

Then I moved fast. Changed clothes. Washed my face. Out the door in about fifteen minutes.

My office was twenty minutes away, mostly freeway, on the opposite end of town. As I drove, I noticed something strange. It seemed darker than it should have been and getting darker still. I was used to driving to work in the dark or in early dawn light. I expected the sky to be softening, easing into morning.

Instead, it looked like night was settling in.

I checked the clock again.

It was nearing ten.

That made no sense. By ten in the morning, it should have been fully daylight. Bright. Busy. There should have been traffic. People. Signs of life. There were none; I kept driving.

I kept glancing between the road and the clock, trying to reconcile what I was seeing with what I believed to be true. The freeway was quiet. The sky stayed dark. The numbers on the dashboard did not change in any reassuring way.

The realization arrived slowly, which is generous, considering the circumstances.

It was not morning.

It was night.

It was ten p.m.

I was almost to the office when it finally settled in. I pulled off the freeway and sat in the car, staring at the steering wheel, saying it out loud to myself like a person trying to convince a small child.

“It’s night.”

Then I remembered the message.

I had texted my boss.

At eleven p.m. his time.

I pictured him asleep in Minnesota, his phone lighting up on the nightstand with a calm, responsible message from his employee announcing she was on her way to work in the middle of the night. I sat there, fully dressed for the office, wondering how this had happened and hoping deeply that I had not woken him.

There was nothing to do but go home.

The next morning... the real one... I went to work as usual. Same early hour. Same dark drive. This time, intentionally. When I got to my desk, I sent another message. I apologized, explaining briefly. I kept it factual and mercifully short.

He was amused.

He told me he had seen the message, understood immediately that something strange had happened, and gone back to sleep. He had worked with me long enough to know that this sort of thing fell well within my established range.

I drank my coffee and felt grateful for a boss who did not ask follow-up questions.

Somewhere between exhaustion, long summer light, and my own stubborn insistence on pretending I function well before sunrise, my brain had simply checked out. It wandered off, took the evening with it, and handed me back a very confident misunderstanding of time.

I continued working pre-dawn mornings, but I never fully trusted the couch after six.

A little grace, a little grit, plenty of laughter,

~Stef

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