What Working in Yellowstone is Like for Me

50 hour weeks (on the lower side of my average)

Closing shifts followed by opening shifts three days of the week (3 or 4 hours of sleep)

• I f I work a dinner shift I usually won't get home until midnight or so. After work my body is so pumped up from moving around so constantly, that it usually takes me an hour to finally settle down. I don't actually get to sleep until around 1:30 or 2:30 am if Daniel wants to talk. I, then, have to wake up around 5:20 am in order to open in the morning. Sometimes I am lucky enough to ONLY work a breakfast shift (after closing) so I get off work at 10:30 or 11 am. This when Daniel is just waking up since he works the night shift. Unfortunately for me, when Mr. Daniel wakes up from his full 8 hours and sees me awake he thinks its time for food and then a brisk hike. I try to explain to him that we are not remotely close to equally well rested but he still seems to forget everyday. 

2 days off (one of which is used to catch up on much needed sleep)

• Our days off are scheduled together. Or rather my two days off are scheduled during the same time as Daniel's three days off. By the time my weekend comes around, I am so exhausted I can barely think straight, so when I get off at midnight I tend to sleep as long as possible. Sometimes, I am just drifting in and out of consciousness on the first day even if I am awake. My second day off I usually try to hike with Daniel. But when I do that, the room tends not to get cleaned. And the laundry gets neglected a bit as well.

15 minutes to eat before a shift

• The Employee Dining Room or the EDR doesn't open until 15 minutes before my shifts start so I don't get to eat much and am therefore starving by the end of my shift. If I am even running 5 minutes late, I can probably just forget eating at all. 

When I am not tired to the bone, I do enjoy the park very much. It is very beautiful and changing everyday. It seems like there is always something new to see and we have had a lot of good times so far. But I am feeling very frustrated that it feels like work even on my days off sometimes. I keep getting woken up before I want to be and begrudged any naps I feel I need. I miss my friends in Manhattan more and more everyday. They were the bees knees and the people here are too weird even for me. Or they are just weird enough and have crazy anger problems. Or drink every single night. The people I like the most are probably around 60 and have a group of their own. So I am also feeling kinda lonely. I feel like all I do is work, sleep, look for apartments in Washington, hike a little, and clean. By myself. It sucks. I kind of want to leave.