I'm Too Tired to Come Up with a Catchy Title

I am finding a new intimacy with weariness.

Sorry, I just had to be poetic for a minute.  But seriously.  I’m tired.

I saw something once online where someone called themselves not an early bird or a night owl but “some kind of permanently exhausted pigeon.”  It seems apt enough to me.  Today I woke up at five, as I always do on Mondays so I can go meet the truck deliveries for the restaurant.  I don’t mind working early in the morning—it leaves my afternoons and evenings free, which suits me just fine.  But those very early shifts are a drag, and this morning was one of the worst.  Even as I drove into work, I was dreaming about the nap I would take this afternoon.  And that nap, which was supposed to take only half an hour, stretched almost into two.

Today’s an atypical day in that respect.  Usually I don’t nap, unless one counts five minutes of closing my eyes over a book in the afternoon.  And I don’t usually feel the weight of exhaustion behind my eyes and in my limbs the way I did today.  But tiredness is a familiar feeling.  I realized several years ago that my go-to conversation starter is “Man, I’m tired.”  I think I did that because not only is it often true for me, but it’s true for most other people as well.

What is it about adulthood that wears us out so much?  For me, I know that part of it is a failure to manage my own sleep well enough.  I have an alarm on my phone that tells me when I should go to bed, but I rarely follow it.  Usually by the time it goes off, I’m not as tired as I was in the afternoon (thanks, circadian rhythms).  Even if my body is ready to let go, my mind still clings to its to-do list, the stories it wanted to explore and the tasks it wanted to accomplish.  Sleep does not weigh as heavy in the balance as all that—though as I get older and more tired, it’s growing in significance.  And while I know that there are other factors that add to my fatigue, diet, exercise, and hormonal patterns being among them, I’ve never taken the time to really look into them.  I am not a good custodian of my own body.

There is just so much I want to do.  There are so many books to read and shows to watch and things to learn.  I want to learn sign language and Korean, and I want to finish War and Peace before it’s due back at the library (unlikely—this is one book I will have to renew), and I want to find a good agent for my novel, and I want to get new music for the children’s choir, and I want to write haiku and read manga and whittle down my list of shows to watch and ponder the existence of love in the world and plan out my vacation.  And, oh yeah, I should probably eat something and shower tonight.  Who has time for sleep?

The problem would seem to be that my mind has far greater reserves of energy than my body does.  But as I grow more intimate with fatigue, I recognize that I wear down mentally and emotionally as well as physically.  As an introvert, I have to ration out my socializing—any week that has more than two social engagements in it makes me tired just to look at it in my calendar.  It’s a tricky business, though, with various considerations to rule in—meeting up at home with one of my friends, for example, takes very little out of me, but attending a church event sometimes takes days of mental preparation, and heaven forbid someone invites me to a party.  So managing my schedule is a delicate business, and sometimes the social anxiety weighs in the balance.  Imagine having to explain to someone that, however much I may love them, I can’t spend too much time in their company because their presence exhausts me.  How do I say it without offending them?

Still, I’m realizing that I’m better off now than I was ten years ago.  Though my body is not quite as resilient as it was (I definitely won’t claim to be aged yet, but I definitely notice a difference!), I am more aware of what makes me tired and what doesn’t.  In finding a new intimacy with weariness, I also have found a new intimacy with myself.

Here is my conclusion: life is exhausting.  The key to managing that is finding what gives you rest—physically, emotionally, and mentally—and doing that.  That’s harder than you might think, because trust me, the world has a lot of advice on how to do it.  Supplements and medicines, meditation, apps and wearable technology, habits to take up and habits to avoid—the list goes on and on.  But in the end, you have to find what works for you, and stick to it.

It’s an ongoing process, because I fully expect to be as different at thirty-eight as I am now from my eighteen-year-old self.  But I’m learning.  And in one respect, in the matter of my confidence that I know what is right for me, I am sure that the world will not wear me down.  I will follow my own advice, and sleep better for it.