When I started my temp gig at Le Amazon, I was wary of the overnight shift. I’d done it in college – y’know…while I was working 50 hours a week and taking 18-21 class hours a week.

I used to have a lot of initiative and energy. Now, I’m tired af, as the kids say.

Anyway, it turned out that I had nothing to worry about, my natural night owl tendencies were easy to uncover and dust off. I’d get home around 5 AM, take a shower, pop a Melatonin and watch a show while my hair dried.

Then I’d sleep for 6 hours.

That eventually grew to a full 8 hours, but after about a month I found that I needed two Mellies for the same caliber of sleep. And now…here I am, not committed to four overnight shifts per week, but merely one per month, at a minimum and able to pick up as many as I want, provided they are available.

Well, I want to work one or two per week, but took last week off to help my body recover a bit from the excess abuse I’ve put on this old bag of bones in the last two months. The enduring pain was in my fingers, believe it or not. My old shoulder injury was whining a bit, too, though. I definitely didn’t want to retrigger that…which is one of the reasons less was more for me with my schedule here.

You’d think that my sleep schedule returning to human normal last week would be a good thing. A relatively easy transition, right?

Nah.

This is me we’re talking about…the “what could possibly go wrong” guy.

I don’t think I slept more than two hours before midnight last week – Wait! Three, I just remembered an involuntary nap – and probably only five hours before 3 AM. To offset that, I started mixing a Mellie into the mix later in the week.

It was a spectacular failure.

I’d take a Mellie before bedtime, sleep for 90 minutes or even up to three whole hours and then be wide awake the rest of the night. Finally, I’d doze fitfully around 4 AM, feeling quasi ready for the day somewhere around ten.

So last night, I decided to shoot the moon. I pulled out all the stops with my sleeping routine-slash-best practices.

No alcohol + two Mellies + warm shower = zip.

I showered and then popped my Mellies and read while waiting for my hair to dry. I turned in around midnight with my alarm set for 8 so I could finally catch up on coffee with the Silver Fox.

Nothing.

Around two, I tried a prostate cancer prevention exercise that has the added benefit of being quite relaxing.

Still nada.

At about 3:30 in the glorious AM, I admitted defeat and got out of bed. I had to concede that the only remaining lever I had to pull was one that I’d never really struggled with before: bed is for sleeping. I’ve gotten in the habit of reading in bed when I struggled to sleep. It’s a terrible habit. People that read in bed like me or watch TV or whatever, train their bodies away from sleeping when their head hits the pillow.

I’ve got to commit to retraining my body into that habit now. So, no more iPad, no more (eek!) phone, no reading, no cocooning…bed is for sleeping. When I wake up, I gotta get in the habit of getting up, even if it’s just to move to the couch. Most of all, if I can’t drift off right away, I have to get out of bed!

Reset.

Take a Mellie.

Try again, later.

But in the interim, I imagine I’ll be keeping Netflix pretty busy.