Run down but no rest for the wicked

I've had a bit of a shift shuffle and the changes to the hours seem to be playing havoc with my body clock and general wellbeing.

The change is only slight (an hour) but it's an hour later - so a midnight starting nightshift, working until midnight or 2am instead of 11pm or 1am.

My biggest problem is the other part of my life, outside of work. I need to run my kids to their school bus in the morning, so a 2am finish means at least 3am to bed (more like 3.30am following an unwind) and then I'm up at 8am to run them down the road. So squeezed in the middle I found 5 hours of poor sleep and I'm trying to cut coffee caffeine out of my diet.

This seems to all be making for a very tired me and when I updated my facebook saying I was entering a world of hurt my hubby was all concerned and supportive.

Then tonight I get a text saying the house is cold, the washing up not put in the dishwasher (which was clean) and I'd forgotten to take the recycling down to the bin. As well as having possum fur left on the carpet from a cat-caught fresh possum last night (discovered at 2am with a heartstopping yelp).

So I'm torn. I work full time on shift work and yet home is never happy. When I'm home I'm too tired to do much and I can't just potter those little incidentals that I might have when I was home full time or make three hour long meals (ok maybe 2) to be creative with the same ol' same ol'.

My youngest is turning 11 next month and I swear I don't know if she acts like a 6 year old or I expect too much from her but she's clingy, she misses me just being around (and human) and wants her mum for everything when Dad just seems to be grumpy (her opinion)

Because work makes me feel so tired I'm struggling in that I don't feel like doing what I would like to do, kayak, walk, read, cache. My head constantly seems to fight with my heart and there is little left it seems to enjoy in life (I miss out so much on church due to my shift work and then miss out on mixing with people to give me that boost of social interaction)

The problem is that while shift work kills, when I have had time off and a social life I was ok. Life was better, I could take off for coffee mid day, I could shop, I had time to myself without kids. I was flexible in appointments and had the advantage of being able to slot things around my shift.

However if I was to return to day shift I'd lose all of that freedom, and constrained in a different way. I'd have to leave my current position and would lose the monetary benefit of shift work allowance (a small price to pay for a life of sleep and alertness)

More importantly though I feel like I'm trying to do it all and failing at the most important things, my family, my home and my health. In my head I want to do more and fail, I'm told I'm doing great in work but criticised in home, I have so many plans but get nowhere and my dreams and visions blow away in the wind.

My colleagues (younger yes and no kids) all seem to be able to do so much more - do I expect too much of myself?

Just torn and more questions than answers... I wonder how others do it...