So you think your sleep patterns are "wierd" ...

[scooperhsd]

https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/09/health/sleep-history-wellness-scn/index.html?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits

If I forget to take my 900 mg gabapenton - going back to sleep is almost impossible. I wake up "ready to go to war" - from trying to sleep on a Navy vessel underway for a couple years. My brain is going full blast +. I need the gabapenton to slow it down - almost make me intoxicated. Then, I can go pee, come back to bed, and get the rest I need. I still as often as not wake up at 0500 or so but at least I've usually had enough sleep to function.

[Jess from VA]

Scott, with all the personal stuff going on in your life (which you seem to be the sole manager of), I don't wonder you have trouble sleeping.  

Are you saying it's been this way since that sea duty, or only more recently?

School was a challenge, but work was worse, usually with enough things to keep several guys busy.  Here are 250 divorce cases, sink or swim buddy.  Oh, all those people that got fired from the massive commissary theft/fraud the OSI has been working for the last year.... well, they're all appealing termination to the Merit System Protection Board, and you're going to prosecute them all.  And you can't lose any of them.  Those two general courts have to be tried back to back because the judge will have to come down here TDY and fly back ASAP, so get them all lined up.  

I had to make a list of all the things I would do tomorrow before bedtime or I would lay there making the list in my head all night.  Then sometimes, I'd have to get up to add something else to the list before I could get to sleep.

Showering right before bedtime was helpful too.  And exercise.

I also developed a few things that I found supremely relaxing and would try to empty my head to only think of that one thing.  And the best one was sailing on a boat in mild wind, with a routine rocking motion over the waves with a cool breeze (and no general quarters drills). 

Retirement is the best thing that ever happened to me.   Naps are now a regular thing.

Boredom is far superior to perpetual worry.