Adjusting to my new medication has been rough. Not as rough as the last one was, sure, but given how long it has been since I’ve felt like I was near one hundred percent (and the fact that I started this medication as soon as I felt I could when coming off the last one), it feels maybe worse than it otherwise would. There’s a lot of emotional weight behind the thought “I don’t know how long it has actually been since I felt more than alright” and it occasionally winds up one hell of a sucker punch to throw my way when I’m feeling down. It doesn’t help that the benefits I’m supposed to be seeing from this medication haven’t really materialized yet and I don’t know if they ever will. It’s entirely possible that this one just doesn’t work for me and that I’ll have spent two months waiting for something that just won’t materialize. Or that has somehow materialized without me knowing it? It’s difficult to say, sometimes, given how much the tiredness from this medication is just sort of casting a pall over my life. That’s the problem with such overwhelming tiredness: it’s difficult to keep track of anything at all, much less how you’re feeling, when your predominant physical and emotional state is “ready to fall asleep the instant I relax” all day, every day.

What’s making all this more difficult is my burnout. Because my burnout was getting worse before I started this medication, I’m not entirely sure how much of my day-to-day exhaustion is my worsening burnout or the medication I’m taking. It’s probably a mixture of both, but the exact proportions of the mixture are impossible for me to tell right now. It’s not like I can just subtract one of them from the equation just to figure out what’s left. That would take a great deal of time on either part, either to remove the medication from my system or to rest enough that I’ve actually recovered from my burnout. I wish I could just do that latter one, but I have genuinely no idea how long recovery will take. I expect true recovery would take some number of months. That number could be one or two, but it could also be five, ten, or maybe twenty-four. I have no idea. I just know that I’ve taken weeks-long vacations and done my best to rest without really making much of a dent in it. Maybe because the stresses of life remained and I was “resting” while my brain continuously reminded me that money was going to be tight for a little bit as a result (since normally I work ten extra hours of overtime every week, I have to be extra careful with my money when I’m only getting income from a normal forty hours per week).

I know that I tend to do better when I’m working “normal” hours and not constantly pushing myself as hard as I can manage, but that’s not going to really be an option I can pursue until I get a roommate or rent goes down for the first time in my entire life as a renter. I think that, like good exercise, it’s more about building healthy habits than it is about doing as much resting as possible in an uninterrupted chain. I think some real, uninterrupted rest would probably be good for me and it would definitely help, but it’s not sustainable in the long run, not in this economy and socio-political environment. And right now, with how much I’m struggling as a result of the meds I’m on, I’m not sure even that would be enough. It’s like a force multiplier on my burnout. The two together have me so exhausted and worn down that I’m struggling to get back into my healthy workout routines that would help get my physical energy levels up, which means that any time I have to push myself at work to do more physically demanding testing (which hasn’t gone away, just gotten cut down into smaller pieces that show up less frequently), I wind up paying for it for the rest of the week at least. If I have to do that twice in one week, I’m basically down for the count all weekend.

Soon, I’ll be taking a vacation. I’m still not sure when, but it will be soon. Another week or two at most. I really need a bunch of unstructured time I can use to get some sleep, do things at my own pace, putter around my apartment, and maybe even figure out how much of my current physical condition is my meds and how much is my burnout. I also need to do another deep clean, file my taxes, and so much other stuff that I’ve been putting off. I just don’t have the energy for much of anything, these days, and I am hoping some rest will either alleviate the problem or make it clear that the problem is the meds I’m on. I’d take either at this point, really. I’d really like to figure out some kind of medication that could be an unabashed success for once in my life, but I’ll genuinely settle for anything that isn’t more of a detriment than a benefit. Which feels like a super low bar to clear, but that’s just the experience I’ve had with trying meds, to be honest. Not a lot of luck.