Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

I woke up around 13:30 Sunday, fell asleep again at 14:00 (was awake just
barely long enough to notice that WFL, WNBA, and CART were all on the telly at
the same time (along with baseball and golf). Next awoke in the dark,
thinking it was probably mid-evening ... nope, it was 02:30 this morning.
Yow.

I've got jury duty today. The summons said if I needed to be excused for
medical reasons, I needed to supply a note from my doctor within five days.
I'm in an HMO. When's the last time anyone got an HMO to move that fast?
(Unless you tell the appointments nurse, "I'm having difficulty breathing",
that is?) This is going to suck. I'd *like* to do my civic duty here, but
fercryinoutloud, I'm only good for a few hours at a time before I need a rest
and mornings are _not_ when I function well. This particular morning will be
especially interesting, given my waking up in the wee hours after twelve hours
of sleep but already being particularly achy in my shoulders and arms. (Pain
is *distracting*. If I'm going to be a juror, I want to be able to give that
my full attention.)

When I got the first jury-duty notice, which wasn't a summons -- just a notice
that I could be summoned -- in the space for listing reasons I should be
excused, I wrote that due to fibromyalgia I was only good for half a day, and
that early morning was likely to be a disruption to my sleep cycle (which, if
I'm woken too early, tends to make for a more painful day), but that if jurors
were called for half-day sessions, then put me down for an afternoon and I'd
serve cheerfully. I guess jurors are called for whole days. I'm supposed to
be there at 08:15. Today I might actually be able to do that, given that I'm
already awake now, but most days that would be hours before I'm usually even
awake.

It's not an issue of getting up _early_; it's a matter of getting up so much
_earliER_. Yeah, lots of people are already at work by 08:00; but asking me
to be someplace then is like asking a morning person to be someplace at 05:00.
The world is set up for morning people (whom sleep and biorythym researchers
refer to as "larks") and makes little accomodation for night people ("owls").
It's not just this court; it's most of our culture. The folks in the court
system who set the schedule are just following the bias of the world around
them. There's a blind spot: "Well everyone who works _here_ has no trouble
getting in at eight o'clock, so there's no reason anybody else should have a
problem with it." Similarly in many offices, an owl who gets all his or her
work done and works as many hours as everyone else will often get lectured and
eventually penalized for not showing up as early as everyone else. Be there
"bright and early" and you're a dedicated hard-worker; stay later than
everyone else and you're seen as "making up" for having gotten in late, even
if late is when you do your best work. Besides, the boss (almost always a
lark) has already gone home by then, so nobody sees how late you stay.

I started a long rant followed by a thoughtful examination of the issue, but
realized that a) it's pretty long for how I planned to use this journal and b)
it needs a lot of editing, so I'll stick that into the pile of ideas that
should eventually wind up on my essays page and plan to get back to it later.

For now let's just say that if they held court at night, I'd do a lot better
serving as a juror then than in the morning.