Chronic insomnia

It's Monday. I need 10 hours of sleep. So calculating 1 hour to fall asleep on my pills, I need to take them at least by 9, 8:30 if I want to be really sleepy when I fall asleep. Sounds nice, eh?

It's Tuesday. I have to stay up from 11pm - ???. I got off work a little early but I can't nap. It will ruin my sleep cadence. What do I do? Work until I guestimate it will be over in an hour. Sometimes it works out, sometimes I'm left with being awake another hour after I finish work at 2 AM.

Having insomnia is not fun. On emergencies and weekends I can not take my sleeping meds but I will probably only get 3 hours of sleep, TOPS. My Bipolar revolves around the ability for me to get my optimal sleep, 10 hours. Yes, 10 hours is a lot and I can function on 8 but 10 is that sweet spot where when I wake up, I get right up, dressed and can be out the door in 10 minutes.

I have to be flexible for my job but how do I manage my sleep schedule? It's been crazy busy lately so I've also fallen back to using caffeine to ensure sharpness in my night time duties (usually I avoid all caffeine except those naturally occurring in some foods such as small amounts of chocolate but I don't drink soda or coffee or most teas).

There's been a few occasions where I was afraid to take my pills because I thought I might not wake up. Not because of mixing alcohol or recreational drugs (I don't do any of those) but because I had something weird happen before bed like prolonged heart palpitations, breathing issues, worry of taking care of another or sick animals etc.

On the weekends we sometimes have game nights and those tend to last until 1 AMish. That kind of throws me for a loop but I can usually get back in sync Sunday night. HOWEVER, lately, I just haven't been able to fall asleep. I try every natural path (melatonin, turning off all devices when lights out, trying to breathe steadily and calming my mind while lights out and getting into bed around the time I want to sleep) with aid of my night time meds but it just is taking longer and longer to fall asleep (I'm up to about 2 hours after pills). The only bright side is when I do go out, I go out out. Usually I'm a light sleeper but Ambien CR puts me out out. And I stay asleep which has always been a problem for me.

But the problem is if I take my pills at 7 and I only get sleepy at 9 there is still the possibility of the magical times when it only takes 1/2 hour to fall asleep. Then what? I sleep for more than 12 hours? I don't know the magical combination to get that 1/2 hour point so I can just take them at 9:30 so it's so inconsistent. And every month for 2 weeks it gets all messed up again due to work.

It's a frustrating cycle. Any advice would help! My PD is not particularly helpful in this department and isn't really open to prescribing a fall asleep pill with my stay asleep pill since it's supposed to take care of both.

So that's my little rant, not sure of the point I'm getting at with this post but maybe I can get advice or someone can relate.