Everybody is always trying so hard not to be tired. People love to complain about it. Usually if there is a lull in the conversation, someone will sneak in a little "Wow...I'm so tired" just to fill in space. Sympathetic people give sympathetic looks to the tired person in question, but most people just pass over this common statement because they have already heard it seven times in the last 24 hours. Amongst students, it's a common greeting: "How you doing?" "Oh, I'm really tired. How are you?" On the metro or in the bus, heads bob more in an attempt to keep from sleeping than they do from tunes coming through commuters' headphones.
Maybe I am the only person on earth who loves being tired. To me it means that I am active, up and at 'em, living my life and not sitting on my ass at home. It means my body has been moving and streching and hopping on buses and going from a to z and back again. My brain has been exercizing and flexing and getting stronger. My life has been collecting new experiences and storing them away in my highly selective memory bank (it's very prestigious, you see).
These are all good things to be doing. They exhaust me, but I love it.
I hate being home at midnight and not being tired. It means I haven't done anything with my day. Or that I did something, but that I could have done more.
Of course, it's inconvenient to be tired at the wrong moment - say, fifteen minutes into that lecture on Baudelaire or half an hour into dinner with the in-laws - but this is due not to living each day to its fullest in excess; it is instead just a result of poor planning.
If plotted out correctly, the day should end at one (or so) am and start at eight (or so) in the morning. You can adjust this schedule to your needs, as long as you see more daylight than starlight. This means seven hours of sleep per night, with the occasional sleep-in 'til nine or the early crash at midnight. This is plenty of sleep for your average Joe. I believe firmly that 95% of people staying up past two am are not really doing anything efficient anyway (the other 5% are those people that genuinely DO work better at night. But the original 95% of people are just saying this cause they hate waking up early). Sure, there is the occasional worthwhile cram session or last-minute paper-writing festival, but those that make a habit of their late night endeavors are most often just tinkering away on the computer or watching really bad television. It's all about screens. They're evil and can lure you into the wee hours.
Anyway. All of this is to say that in recent days I have come to realize that I love to go to bed with sore feet, a buzzing brain, and droopy eyelids. If I don't fall asleep within the first fifteen minutes after I turn out the light, I might as well give into the evil no-sleep gods 'cause that means I'm not getting a wink before six am. So I better be knackered when I hit the sack.
There is something to be said about just wanting to fall into your bed at night. Something about being so beat, so dogtired that you just can't think anymore. Something about having filled your day with so much activity, so much movement and production and relaxation and here and there and everywhere that when you finally come to your own luscious, fluffy pillow you can rest your weary head on it, look back on your day and say, "Whoa. I did all that in one day. Shit. Man, I'm tired."
That's the right time to say it.
Goodnight.
It's quarter to two in the morning, and I got up at eight. I'm forty-five minutes behind schedule. Man, I'm tired. Goodnight.
You make me feel old. If I'm not in bed by 10, 10:30 I'm ska-rewed.
Well, you ARE old Kari.
Kidding kidding kidding.
Ideallly, I would do the 10.00/10.30 thing. But it's just not possible in my social circle.
But you're getting up at 7.00, not 8.00. Difference, there.
i actually agree ... hrm. maybe i should stop complaining about being tired. i love reading your p.o.v. ... it makes me think (and rethink) my own.