Circadian Rhythms

As I lay in my cot this morning I found myself wondering about the hours I’m working and how my body responds to it. Now mind you this morning was 4:30 PM as I woke to get ready for the night shift and a 14 hour day. I’ve not managed more than 6 hours sleep any night since I left the states. As I think back that is about the best I did when shipboard as well. It struck me that when I am working at my civilian job I need at least 7 hours to focus at work. This baffles me a bit. This job is much longer and more stressful than my other job. Why do I require less sleep? In fact why or how was I able to switch gears to nights without missing a beat? Odd.
The focus here at Op Tomodachi HQ is shifting, finally. What we all recognized at the working level is finally being voiced at the flag level… well at least an aspect of it is. The HA/DR mission here is evaporating as the Government of Japan has increased ability to distribute aid. We are still in the thick of it for the remediation of nuclear disaster though. So, what do you do with a growing organization when the main focus of your efforts begins to melt away like so many spent fuel rods. Well you invent a mission of course! We are beginning to focus on plans for worst case scenarios. Now, before you go off the deep end, please remember worst case by definition is a VERY unlikely event. It assumes all hell breaks loose. If we get asked tomorrow what contingency plans we have for the arrival of Godzilla it wouldn’t surprise me at all. What we are considering is, if some of the reactors go into full melt mode and spew nasty little isotopes, and the wind shifts and blows out of the N.E. for days what will we do about all the military personnel stationed on the Kanto Plain. This is probably useful from a planning standpoint but from experience we have never funded a worst case scenario plan. It’s rather like stocking you very own bomb shelter with enough food to outlast a Dr Strangelove scenario… interesting academic exercise but no, not gonna throw cold hard cash at that!

Not sure where this leaves me and my peers wondering about the end of this operation. It seems to me to be something of a “make work” plan to keep us gainfully employed while they decide when it is politically acceptable to admit that the Japanese don’t need us as much as we’d like to think they do. In the mean time I’ll continue plugging away in this zone where days loose shape and sleep seems unimportant.