After ten days of Musikfest, today it was back to reality. Even though I’d been to the festival many times before it was my first time volunteering and I had a great time. I had the privilege of working with a great team and will definitely be helping out next year. I knew that volunteering every night would tie up my evenings for ten days, bu one thing that I didn’t anticipate was how the lack of sleep would affect me.

Waking up at 5:30 am to get ready for work has been normal for me for a few years now, and on nights that I’ve stayed out “late” it didn’t really bother me, but over a week of getting in around midnight meant that most nights I got five hours of sleep or less. As much as I’ll miss everything about Musikfest, getting back to reality and being able to sleep regularly will hopefully restore some sanity to my life.

I learned an important lesson this year, and it’s that I can’t take sleep for granted. I’m not sure if other people noticed, but I could certainly feel how operating on autopilot was not a good thing. That means next year I’ll either need to volunteer fewer nights at Musikfest, or that I’ll need to take a few days of vacation time so I can recharge. I think I’ll go with the latter.