I started a new shift this month. I’m finally off graveyard and back to swing. But that’s not the best part–I’m working 4 ten-hour shifts per week.

I’ve been trying to get to a place where I can work a 4×10 schedule for a good six years now. Finally! Needless to say, I love my new shift.

I have Thursday, Friday, and Sunday off. It kinda sucks to have split days, but it’s still a helluva lot better than working 5 days a week.

It doesn’t bother me that my day is longer and I have less free time when I get home. To me, it’s a very small sacrifice to make in order to get that extra DAY free.

My typical day starts at 9am when the alarm goes off. I like to try to wake up as early as I can. This gives me four hours to get ready for work, as I have to be at my desk at 1pm. I hate to be rushed, and I hate to be late, so I like having plenty of time to do my business.

Getting up earlier than I need to also makes it easier to wake up early on my days off. If I’m used to waking up at 9 every morning, it’s not impossible for me to get up at 7 if I want to get an even earlier start on my day.

Swing is the perfect shift to avoid traffic, which I despise. I lived in the Los Angeles area for 10 years. Stop and go traffic daily, seemingly round-the-clock. That was absolute misery. So now I’m on swing shift and I have no traffic at all going to work or coming home.

I work my ten hours, with a 30 minute lunch, and I’m off at 11:30pm. It takes me about 50 minutes to drive the 50 miles back to Manteca (in no traffic!). Everything is closed after midnight, so I don’t go anywhere else–I just go home.

I make and eat dinner, then I have 45 minutes to play a game or read, then I go to bed at around 2am. Seven hours later the alarm goes off and I do it all over again.

I don’t ever want to go back to working a 5×8 shift, regardless of the working hours or the days off.