Tired

Let’s face it! From the waist down, everything is kaput!

“I’m Tired,” Lili von Schtupp (Madeline Kahn), from Blazing Saddles (1974)

Dearest Rachel –

You might recall, back before we all but officially turned Saturday mornings into “our” time, I would wake up early in the morning, drive to the office, and put in a couple of hours of uninterrupted work in order to get that little bit further ahead on my many tasks and responsibilities I had to deal with there. I’d call you as I was wrapping up, in part to let you know where I’d disappeared to (although, if you had been awake for any length of time, you already knew), and to take any order you might have for breakfast that I could pick up. It was what started our little habit of doing breakfast from McDonald’s every Saturday, as I was already doing so about every other week or so anyway.

My point is, getting up early when I didn’t technically have to has been a longstanding tradition for me. Combined with the fact that you rarely wanted to go to bed until you’d wrung every last drop of activity from the day you were in, and our out-of-syncness got to be a running joke between us. In a way, it’s served me reasonably well, insofar as I’d already been accustomed to falling asleep in an otherwise empty bedroom, and waking up and going about my morning as the sole consciousness in turn. How you would have dealt with things if the tables were turned, I have no idea, and I suppose I should be glad for you that you didn’t get subjected to that ordeal.

But at the moment, even when I should need to that much less (since I no longer have to report to work, and what vocational responsibilities I might have are usually of the ‘whenever you get around to it, Randy, that’ll be fine’ variety), I find myself waking up at increasingly ridiculous hours. Recently, that’s been because of my efforts to find a time to work out that works best within my schedule – especially when I wake up to peer at a number on my scale first thing in the morning that I don’t like very much. The problem with all that is, by the end of the day, I’ve lost all energy, and I’m practically piling myself into bed before nine o’clock. Sure, that prevents me from doing something untoward, like eating when I shouldn’t, that late at night, but it also guarantees that I’ll be all too awake all too soon the next day.

And so it goes for me today. The title is a bit of a misnomer, then. I’m not so much ‘tired’ per se – seven hours of sleep is quite sufficient, in fact – as I am simply tired of this self-created circadian rhythm. Sure, I don’t feel the need to head out right now, and work off this morning’s reading, this wearing myself out for the rest of the day – while the number is larger than yesterday morning, it’s still one that felt like a mere dream barely a week or two ago – but I still wonder if I shouldn’t at some point after I’m done with actual ‘work’ at the ‘office,’ as I’m not going to bother doing so over the weekend – which by eight or nine tonight, will still leave me just as exhausted as I was yesterday. And with no reason to go out or otherwise stay up, I’m just as likely to crash early and wake up early tomorrow, and tomorrow, and so on and so on.

But you might say (only mildly hypocritically) that this sounds like a good thing. I’m so much more productive when I’m the only one in the room, when there are no distractions to tempt me away from what I set out to do. And yes, that’s quite true. But suppose – as is much more the case now than it ever has been – there’s nothing in particular that I’ve set out to do at the moment? What good is all that productivity then? Of course, there are always diversions I can find to keep me occupied – that’s virtually the whole purpose of the internet, after all, and to a certain extent, it would be nice to think that I’m one of those diversions for a select number of people – but that isn’t really the same thing. Meanwhile – and it’s especially noticeable on a Friday – what am I doing with my evenings, when I should be meeting and having fun with other people, maybe out looking for Megumi…?

I’m crawling into bed – by myself, I should point out – just when others’ nights are barely getting started. And I’m getting a little tired of it.

As I’m telling you all this, I’m realizing how completely out-of-place Lili’s line is for an epigraph to this letter; I’m literally dealing with the opposite of her problem. At least, in her case, she had some control over the situation; she could say “no” to her “stage-door johnnies,” both in word and (demonstrably) in deed. Saying “yes” from where I stand, however, doesn’t bring Megumi running, and won’t encourage me to stay up late at night, and bring my schedule back to where it ought to be. And as usual, I don’t have any good answers for myself. If you have anything for me, I’d appreciate the help. Heck, if you had anything to say to me, that would be worth staying up for.

But until you figure out how to get in touch with me, honey, keep an eye on me, and wish me luck. I’m going to need it.