"Specifically to RDMercer: you really hit it on the head right there with what you had at your former home. Those kinds of deep personal connections are what makes life beautiful. When we are cut off from them, or can never form them in the first place, our psyches decay. You and your wife had something incredible there and I'm sorry you had to leave it behind. Working odd shifts is very isolating, and like many other things, it might be something you have to personally experience to understand. I did put in an application to return to school and finally finish my degree. "

I couldn't do shift work. It destroyed me. Punching a clock, and knowing that, in a factory setting, work was never "closed" and I could be called in at any time. I could go back to that industry and make more money, but I couldn't do it for long without it seriously effecting my mental health. Shift rotations kind of make you feel like a spectator on the rest of the world, which exacerbates the feeling of isolation. I'm saying, you may have more connections than you think you do, but the perceptions shift rotations cause may be bad filter or lens on the world for you.

Try to get out if it is effecting you. Hopefully you can try to trade up. I voiced my own concerns about isolation a year or more ago, and another poster pointed out how just pushing trhough day after day destroys our ability to think in creative and novel ways., which effect our earning potential and ability to come up with solutions... Which keeps us locked into the same rut.

RDMercer