Ugh I feel this in my little sleep deprived soul

I do this thing where if I follow a routine for too long, I eventually start to subconsciously sabotage it. And with sleep, I feel pretty much forced to not sleep at a reasonable hour the moment I have a free day.

But at the same time, mental health be going 📉📉📉 if I don’t have enough consistency and don’t see enough sunlight, and honestly, if I wake up any later than 10

I don’t know what’s wrong with me, or how to fix myself, so it would be hypocritical to tell you how to not do the same thing I’m currently doing (and won’t take my own advice for), but in my experience, all night+dayers rarely work out. I’ve pulled them off a few times, but I really need to be doing something semi (but not very) active all day to make it work. I usually end up doing it every time I catch the night bus to Mildura, since I can’t sleep on public transport, but also don’t have anything to do while I’m there except turn around and come back. On that return trip, I usually end up slipping in and out of consciousness. I believe the assorted medical nerds would call it a “microsleep”.

Also, it’ll completely fuck your entire weekend. If you try to sleep now, or even within the next few hours (sometimes for me the stress of needing to be asleep an hour ago to get a solid 8 hours is what ends up stopping me from sleeping until 4 or 5 in the morning), you’ll probably wake up between 10am-12pm. After you do your morning routines and get yourself together, that probably leaves you with a few hours of daylight left to go sit outside for a few hours

I’ve found my dodgy grey market possibly illegally imported melatonin helpful. I start off with 1mg and take more as it gets later if I still can’t sleep. Usually I’m so tired by then, that as soon as I put my phone down and turn the light off, I can sleep reasonably quickly (20 minutes or so, but I follow exactly 0 healthy sleep principles). It’s just making myself part with the day and stop doing anxiety that’s the issue.

Without medication, I find it very difficult to fix a bad sleep schedule by trying to sleep earlier. I’ve tried it before, with all the bells and whistles. No caffeine within 12 hours of bedtime, at least half an hour of moderate-intense activity and a couple of hours of lighter activity, no screens within an hour or two of bed, etc, and none of it ever worked. But you can try spiking your sleep tonight. Assuming you work/otherwise have to be up early on Monday, it could be worth only getting 4/5 hours of sleep tonight, waking up early tomorrow, powering through the day, and sleeping as early as you can manage tomorrow night. It’ll fuck up your Saturday, and probably put a damper on your sunday, but if you can do it, that does mean your Monday will be at least slightly more energised!

Also, if you can afford it, psychologist or therapist to try and explore why you struggle with sleeping, with either a referral back to your GP for sleeping medication, or a referral to a psychologist for anti anxiety medication, or other similar medications. Or just chatting it through can help too. This is what I’m currently trying to do