Recently, I had been noticing a pattern of fatigue in the afternoon – more than the normal post-lunch slump.  It has been seriously screwing with my state of mind, making it very difficult to get through an afternoon of work.  As a software developer, I need to be able to focus when I am working.  Putting a 1 where a 0 should be (or an INNER JOIN from a to a, instead of a to b – for you developers out there), can be disastrous.  Coding while fatigued has caused me many hours of pointless bug-hunting in the past, so I try to keep a certain level of alertness.

Add to that, the affect that fatigue has on my depression (and vice-versa) I decided to try to figure out how to address it.  One possibility is coffee.  Not the drinking of it, but the effect of crashing down from it afterwards.  I have been a big coffee drinker for years, but lately it has increased when I am at work.  I sat down and worked out how much I was drinking, and concluded that I am averaging 6-8 cups a day.  That’s an average, some days it is a lot more.  I know, I know – I can hear the eye-rolling from here.  It seems like it would be an obvious thing, but when something has been such a big part of your life for so many years, you develop a “blind spot” to it.

So, I made a decision to drastically cut back on my caffeine intake.  I still allow myself my coffee in the morning, while I am getting ready for work, but as soon as I get to work I am limiting myself to tea.  This is a lot harder than it sounds, as the habit of drinking coffee at work is tugging at me psychologically a lot more than physically.  So far, so good.  Of course, that’s easy to say when it has only been a day 🙂  I am trying to avoid caffeine withdrawal by weaning down slowly, but if Georgia starts mentioning that I am chewing the wallpaper and throwing the cat, you will know why.

Part of my tea drinking is also going to be switching from black tea to green tea, both for the lower caffeine and the health benefits.  I have a selection of different green teas chosen, from Pomegranate to Chai, so hopefully I will find a few that I really like.  I am more than open to suggestions if anyone knows of some really good blends…

Oh, and did I mention that I hate daylight-saving time…  fraking time changes…. losing an hour’s sleep… grumble, grumble, grumble…