God I'm so tired

The morning shift is misery. You wake up at 4 a.m. and enter an office that's much too cold. You're alone, and usually extremely hungry. But there's no food, nobody to prepare it for you at home and no vendors selling their wares so early. At 5 a.m. when your mind only wants to drift into dreams, you have to write about Wall Street. And it's so cold, so cold, you're wearing two layers of clothing but it's still so cold, so punishingly cold. And you're so alone.

By 8 a.m. your whole head has had enough. Your nose has had enough of running. Your eyes have had enough of reading. Your lips are dry. Your eyelids are heavy. You can't fight it. You can't fend off sleep when it returns for its territory.

At 9 a.m. the end is near. Other people begin to appear in the office. They provide heat, and chatter. But for you the only company is your insane colleague, whose utter lack of self-awareness is your undoing. Your friends won't come. They have work to do, outside. You're no longer alone, but you'll wish you were. For the remaining three hours the challenges are no longer physical but mental. How do you stay calm when you really want to yell at your superior? How do you stay put when you're tempted to walk away and never look back?