Cugel the Clever posted:

I've had low quality sleep for as long as I can remember. I average 7.5 hours every night, but often find myself at least a little foggy during the day. It's quite the vicious cycle: poor sleep leads to struggling during the day leads to stress leads to poor sleep.

Part of it may be that I can have difficulty getting to sleep because bedtime is basically my brain's time to de-stress with long-form day dreaming, which sometimes just pushes me quickly and smoothly toward sleep and other times leaves me amped up for a couple hours. I guess I could try finding some other time in the day for it and actually attempt to "turn off my mind" like folks apparently do, but it's not so simple as there just isn't a whole lot of other time in the day to just let my mind roam free for such a length of time. My brain wants sleep, but it wants the time to day dream more.

There are only two things that have reliably eliminate this. The first is international travel, which I imagine leaves me too exhausted to do anything but sleep and breaks the habit for a couple of weeks. The second is having a partner spend the night, which, even if we're not getting up to anything, results in rapid and sound sleep. The first isn't really a solution. The second hasn't been available for some time and, until covid's been overcome, won't be until at least late summer.

Tangentially related: I haven't had a proper nightmare in at least eight years and I feel like I'm missing out. The last "holy poo poo, this is terrifying" one I had, my brain inexplicably chose fight over flight and completely turned the dream upside down in the most exquisitely satisfying way. Ever since, whenever there are hints of unease or fear in a dream, my mind just "nope"s right out and stomps it out.