- A: A normal night's sleep. Before I was the age of 32, I got an "A" every single night. It broke at that age. I'm 43 now.
- B: A decent night's sleep, feeling pretty good and productive the next day.
- C: A poor night's sleep; focus begins to become a struggle, and disassociation begins to get bad.
- D: A truly awful night's sleep; awake most of the night, not really functional in the real world.
- F: Can't even call this sleep; may as well have stayed up all night. Disassociation is on another level.
Here is a chart of my sleep over the last sixty days, by category:
I am on 100 mg of Trazodone, 3 mg of Lunesta, plus I pop a Melatonin pill as well. The only "A" and "B" records above were nights when I took, on top of my normal pill routine, a couple of Benadryl, or a serving of diphenhydramine. My psychiatrist is switching me from Lunesta to Ambien, so we'll see if that helps. Hopefully that will arrive in the mail today or tomorrow.
Over the last seven nights I've had three C's, three D's, and one F. And I'm supposed to work today-- I'll be lucky if I can remember my own name, much less be able to do anything productive. The issues causing this sleep are, in order:
- My Career: Can't do much about this, I have a wife and kids to support, plus I'd be leaving ten months of full-time severance pay on the table should they lay me off at some point-- so I don't want to quit.
- My Living Arrangement: I'm stuck here for the next six years, when my son will be 18 years old. We're trying to mitigate this by spending more time in the Twin Cities, in the in-law's house living like a normal family, by ourselves, where I'll feel safe.
- Church Stress: The work I do for my church is the favorite part of my life-- but I do get performance anxiety. Last weekend it was nerves operating a griddle for a pancake breakfast; this weekend it's altar serving with my son for the first-ever time (I've done it before, but he hasn't).
Another thing I'm looking at is potentially taking an FMLA leave. My employer's policies regarding this are somewhat difficult to understand, so I may need to meet with an HR person for clarification.
Other than all of this, just been playing a lot of "International Superstar Soccer 64" on an actual N64 and CRT TV; "Avowed" on my gaming PC; mixed in with some "Super Street Fighter II" on Genesis on my CRT via the OLED Steam Deck and RetroArch, and a plethora of 3DO games, also on my CRT TV.