Hello! If you've known me for a long time or even a little bit of time you may know I'm squarely in my late 30s and the 40's are staring me down menacingly from behind a chain link fence nearby.

This means I'm suddenly acutely aware of how I didn't really do any exercise previously. Most of the exercise I got in my 20's was by working Retail and Food Service and you know what, the big box of 20 ounce plastic cups at Panera went on the top shelf in the back. When I got an office job in my field this pretty much dried up completely. I've spent the last year or so grappling with this: how do I trick myself into exercise? Taking the bus is one I can do, but thats just walking to the bus stop and between the stops I need for my transfers, it's not really Cardio in the way I'm trying to get to. I bought a DDR pad and until Christmas where I got really busy consistently I was using it frequently! Except now that that's over I haven't really grooved lately and should probably get back to it. But anyway, the point of this post isn't really exercise. It's how I'm trying to think about my health a little more.

I have GI Tract problems I'm trying to chase down, rooted in a single case of food poisoning in 2019. I have carpal tunnel because I'm a programmer. I have a mild anxiety disorder (self-diagnosed) because I come from a long line of worriers. I call it mild because I believe I've learned how to ignore those feelings in most situations- worrying never did me any good, bad things will happen even if I do worry, so why should I listen to that part of my brain? And then there's just general aches and pains like my back hurts sometimes and my knee hurts if I lean on it weird and all that good stuff.

But one of the problems with my health I can trace back to a very young age: I've been an insomniac for as long as I can remember. Probably since I was like 8 or 9, which is coincidentally when I was misdiagnosed with ADHD and put on Ritalin that I didn't need.... I'm sure there's no correlation there. I can focus on stuff just fine, what I think they saw as ADHD in the 90s was probably some degree of Autism, and I say probably because I'm "Undiagnosed But Pretty Sure"

Now, don't get me wrong, I love sleep, if it were up to me I'd be sleeping right now, but my body doesn't agree with me about this most of the time. When I was little, in the summers I'd routinely stay up all night with my sister watching cartoon network (this was pre-Adult Swim). The New Scooby Doo Movies would run pretty much all night until 6 AM. During the school year I'd often try and sneak downstairs to watch TV with the volume turned really low. When I was at my grandmother's house overnight, where my grandparents were terrible at setting boundaries because I'm not her child, I'd be staying up until 5 AM watching Comedy Central, MTV or Cartoon Network. Because of this I can tell you that MTV's Undressed isn't very good, and while it was correct to be pushing safe sex and all that, it was just boring to a pubescent gay teenager that wants to see cocks. Dave Attell's Insominac, also not very good, but I respect the hustle of convincing Comedy Central to pick up your late night bar crawl tabs.

Anyway, I've finally asked for some help from my doctor about this. I've been self medicating with Melatonin and Benadryl for years and I need some more help. Melatonin only works for me in small doses - I'm shocked that anyone sells tablets larger than 5mg, anything over 3mg does not work at all for me. 1mg tablets do the work, until I build up a tolerance and have to switch. Benadryl is just I can do two or three, build up a tolerance, switch. Repeat that for about 20 years and that's where I'm at.

Explained to my doctor, begged for something, anything, he gave me trazodone. Took the first one last night and had one of the better night sleeps I've had in the past few years. He prescribed it "take as needed" but its hard to know I'll have a sleepless night in advance. I might save them for Sunday nights, which is usually the worst because I'm dreading getting up for work. He also mentioned they're used as an antidepressant, I guess the insomnia treatment is off-label? Maybe it'll lift my mood, idk!