Tired? Aww, Diddums
Day 29, Sunday 15th April 2018
‘Tired’ is the first word that I write, almost every single day. Each morning, I open Medium, and with frightening regularity write “I’m tired today”. The following paragraphs bemoan my general experience of life before I hit on a subject which sparks interest within me. At this point, I select the first few paragraphs of griping about tiredness and delete them, so that my article cuts straight to the topic which feels apposite that day. This process has been like clockwork for the last month, the first utterances that come through my fingers into the keys are usually formulaic, predictable and dull.
Today I’m tired because I worked intensely all week, ran 21 miles yesterday and slept like I’d been snorting coke before bed. Hence I vowed to make a change and not delete my first thoughts, which is ironic, as the first word in this article is still ‘tired’. Tiredness is a peculiar subject, because it goes hand-in-hand with living, breathing and taxes. People who work a lot are tired, people with families are tired, people having a lazy Sunday feel tired, people sitting up in the middle of the night surfing social media are tired. Tiredness seems to be a unifying human experience, it’s as unique or notable as saying “I’ve got a nose” or “The sky is blue”.
That’s why I avoid talking about it, because everyone seems to be tired. A meme summed this whole situation up beautifully:
“Being an adult is easy, you just feel tired all the time and tell people about how tired you are and they tell you how tired they are.” — Anonymous internet meme
Let’s scratch away the surface layer and see what lies underneath. We all have our individual reasons for being tired, they could be too much sleep or too little. Too much work, or too little. Too many kids, or too much socialising. Too much exercise or not enough. Regardless of our situation in life, there always seems to be an opposite position to our own, which also induces tiredness. One of the most exhausting experiences in life is going on holiday and doing absolutely nothing. Those first few days of laying horizontally all day, reading a book and napping are devesatingly fatiguing, which is confusingly ironic.
There’s even a hierarchy of tiredness, with zombie-like new parents at the top and sleep-rich students at the bottom, yet they’re all tired. People often share their tiredness in conversation with each other, but what do we do with that information? Here’s the rub, because tiredness isn’t a clear cut emotion like angry, sad or anxious. Tiredness is more related to actions than feelings, for instance, running a marathon makes people tired and that’s just physical, so tiredness is not a purely emotional, mental state, which makes it less interesting.
At this exact point, I feel like selecting all the text, deleting it and closing this document. I’m writing about tiredness, which is the very thing that I’m also saying is, well, tiring to hear about. How messed up is that? I’d love to say that I’m tired, as an excuse, but that would be adding insult to injury. The real truth is that tiredness acts as a cover story for saying something more interesting. Tired is safe, tired is conventional, tired is the norm, the boat never gets rocked when I say I’m tired. Quite often, it’s a dead end of a conversation, with no recourse for the recipient, because they’re tired as well, so the whole thing is about as unique as a being on facebook.
Tired, along with being busy, are two safehouses in conversation starters, although they’re not particularly sparkling or engaging. They’re trite, boring, oft-repeated and negative. That’s not to deny their existence, tiredness is real, but there are two ways of approaching life, with gratitude or with resentment. I might be tired after cycling all day, so a conversation could start with expressing the happiness I felt during an amazing day of cycling, which opens all kinds of conversations about the experience. Or I could say I feel tired, because I went cycling all day, which sounds pretty dull despite describing the exact same experience.
The point here is that tiredness is a negative spin on any situation, it sets the bar very low in any conversation.
What would happen if my commitment to daily writing included gratitude as my first line? I’m so grateful to be sitting at my desk, writing about what I love? I’m so happy that I ran 21 miles yesterday? I’m so pleased that I washed the sheets yesterday, so I had a sweet smelling, comfortable bed to rest in last night, despite the fact it was a restless night? Rather than the tired old negatives coming in first, how would opening everything with gratitude spin my day, my writing and any conversations?
There’s only one way to find out…
Dear reader… you’ll find a new post from me on Medium 7 days a week, as I seek to develop my emotional connection to writing. Things are only going to get better, so clap, follow, share and come along for the ride.
Also, @le_petit_oeuf
