Lack of motivation - or is it fatigue? - getting worse with age

[namechange4achange]

I'm 41 but feel older. I have always had issues with motivation and been a bit up and down - working very hard for a few weeks and then crashing. Over the years the "up" times are getting shorter and they take it out of me more. The "down" times are rapidly becoming the norm.

I am childless, single, self-employed and very un-materialistic, cheap rent etc. hence I can get away with doing very little. I am currently working about 10-20 hours per week. I don't have much social life. I do political activism when I am in an "up" phase but in between I do almost nothing. I spend a lot of time lying in bed, watching videos, scrolling through social media and eating.

This is not because it's what I want to do though! Inside, I am not a lazy person. The work I do is for good causes and I want to do it well, I don't want to keep putting clients off with excuses. I want to be there for my friends and family and participate in life. I don't think it's pointless or that I can't be bothered - I think there are fine reasons to do all the things on my to-do list, but when I think about doing any of them I just can't face actually doing it.

One thing that is worrying me is the last few months I've found it increasingly difficult to sit up straight or hold my back straight for very long. If I sit up in a chair at my desk for half an hour I feel an overwhelming urge to lay down on the sofa, which means I have to work on my laptop propped up with a curved back, and I'm starting to get a sore back all the time from this.

I do still have the up times, don't get me wrong. Recently I spent a couple of weeks doing something which expended a lot of energy. So I would expect a bit of recovery time, but I need so much more recovery time than anyone else, and am so much more incapacitated by it. I can't even imagine how anyone can do a 9-5 job or look after children.

I get tired earlier and earlier at night. I can happily go to bed at 6pm. I can't sleep at that time but I just want to lie flat and read or watch something. In the morning I wake up thinking "Oh God how am I going to motivate myself to do anything" and "What comfort food do I have for breakfast so I can lose myself in that and stop worrying" (because all this is very worrying to me)

I am letting everyone down every day and letting myself down, but it doesn't feel like my fault. I just don't have the energy!

I know you will probably say go to the GP but I live in a deprived area in the North and the GPs are all overworked. I just don't think they'd take it seriously. Previously in my life I have seen the doctor about depression because I've felt utterly miserable and had unbearable psychological pain. That's not how I feel now, I feel OK, just fucking exhausted.

I'm open to being persuaded to go the doctor but I am also interested in hearing if anyone else has felt like this and if they got over it and how...

@afternoonspray yes I'm getting a lot more done. However, I am very "up and down" so I always have a hard time telling whether some method or other had helped me as opposed to whether I just naturally came out of that down phase

But I think it was starting this thread, reading about the liking and wanting thing, and discussing it with pp that got me out of that down phase into how I am currently. I am trying to keep applying the notion that I can't rely on my motivation circuit yet I do know what I would actually like / would be useful to do so I can kind of bypass it and just do the thing, if that makes sense. It doesn't always work but I think the scientific basis kind of helps me convince myself

I have also started taking vit D3 tablets and trying to eat more food containing vit D, as pp have suggested this could be the problem.

@chaoticgood - you may be bette roff with vitamin D spray. I've read the tablets are very hard for the body to absorb but the spray is sublingual - you just spritz it under the tongue and apparently for some reason that's absorbed more easily. I use the DLux extra strength spray in winter.

Wibdib suggestion about Vitamin D deficiency (you can only get it from Sunlight April to September between 11-3 in northern climes if you don't supplement - diet usually doesn't provide enough unless you live on seal's liver) is an important one.
I had Vitamin D3 deficiency and also found I was hypothyroid, treatable with thyroxine. Both discovered by blood tests by GP. My symptoms were similar to yours over many many years. Not depression exactly just very demotivated, and tired. I had complicated theories about why I was low, but it turned out that the bulk of it was these medical deficiencies (Vit 3, and Thyroxine)

PLEASE GO to GP. I wish I had been diagnosed a lot earlier.

tbh I had the motivation circuit problem too, but now looking back I am convinced that I had problems with Vit D throughout early adulthood, especially in Winter months; usually by summer I felt much better again after time in the sun (unfortunately I worked in a basement most of the time, and got very little of that unless I was on holiday) Vit D deficiency and childbirth can trigger thyroid issues,in my case I think that is what happened.

This sounds very like underactive thyroid too, worth looking up the symptoms to see if they fit?