In the bad old days ... pre-retirement days ... I used to wake up some times in the middle of the night feeling some kind of dread, uneasiness or just plain worried.
Whether dealing with difficult issues at work, a house that constantly needed maintenance or merely counting money all the time in order to keep the wolf from having puppies in our living room, I absolutely hated waking up in the middle of the night to some dread.
Back then I mentioned it to my VA doctor at Camp Rilea after I retired. She had only one suggestion, don't drink much after 5:00 pm and try to avoid getting up to tinkle in the middle of the night.
Right ...
Well, now that we are into our lifestyle, I drink liquids late in the evening at my own risk. I know that I will probably have to answer the tinkle bell and may or may not struggle to fall back asleep. Not as much as I used to however.
The one thing ... I still wake up ready to get up at 5:00 a.m. which I did when I was working. So I try to force myself back to sleep, generally by counting slowly down from 100 or up from 0 and drifting off around half way. But it no longer comes with some unknown or known dread or worry ... unless worrying about not sleeping through for 8 hours can be called dread.
I'm reminded of a Brother Hardin in Willapa Bay and who said he wakes up every night around 3:00 a.m., goes in the living room and watches 1-2 episodes from the inspiration channel and falls asleep or goes back to bed.
My Lietta will sometimes find herself awake with her thoughts, not so much worrisome thoughts but what she calls "churning" where the mind thinks its time to be busy so it is.
Before we fall asleep every night, we are in the habit of watching something "light" before we go to sleep. Been doing that forever it seems during self-quarantine. Before quarantine we watched all the Frasier episodes, Northern Exposure, Coach, Cheers, 3rd Rock From the Sun, Star Trek Next Generation and the rest of a growing collection of tv episodes.
We usually make it through a single episode but sometimes when she knows I'm drifting off she ends it in mid-episode and we take it up again the next night.
Bottom line is "Up in the Night" comes with our retirement territory and no longer feels like an omen of bad mental health.
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