Lately I’ve been in a bad mood.

“Bad mood” is perhaps understating it.

A creeping feeling of malaise. Low-level anxiety about the future. A tendency toward the Doomer mentality. Extra difficulties with my work situation. Conveniently finding ways to avoid interacting with people. And the tiredness. Always the tiredness.

(Sounds kind of like depression.)

I used to feel like this all the time.

I’m noticing it now because I don’t feel like that much anymore. Sure, there are random bouts of melancholy (and always will be), but the all-encompassing black cloud left when I started cleaning the sugar and grains out of my diet.

While I haven’t been eating carbs lately,* I definitely haven’t been getting enough sleep. Especially now that I’m back in the gym lifting weights, which probably requires more sleep rather than less.

To compensate, of course, I drink coffee. Hot, black, and delicious.

As I feel more tired, I drink more coffee.

As I drink more coffee, I feel wired longer and tend to stay awake at night.

Which leads to me feeling tired, which leads to more coffee, which leads to staying up at night….

You know how this works. I’m not the only person who has this problem.

The thing is, it’s not just a “coffee” problem. Or a “tiredness” problem. This vicious cycle has started to change my baseline mood for the worse.

This is not a time in my life when I want to have a bad mood.

I want to be on it: optimistic, future-oriented, clear eyed, and ready to go. There is a volatile time coming up in our history, and I need to be prepared but not terrified. There are many goals that I’d like to reach, and I need to be working on them instead of beating myself up over and over that I’m not doing something right (or better, or at all).

The coffee-fatigue cycle is not helping me at all.

So. The way to break out is by breaking out. Like many things in life, this recursive loop will require breaking. I’ll go to bed earlier tonight, and drink less coffee tomorrow.

The next night, I’ll go to bed even earlier and drink less coffee still. I’ll probably drop the ball a few nights, but that’s okay. Compound interest will help me fix my problem.

If you’re also having troubles with the DOOM mentality, look at where you stand in the Coffee-No Sleep cycle.

(And join me in breaking out.)

*PSA: If you’re extremely sensitive to carbs like me, even a little bit of honey in a beef stick will mess you up. Always read the labels. ALWAYS.