The Nice Thing About Being Tired

Is that it acts as a sort of weapon against the world.  About 3 or 4 hours of sleep should do the trick. It’ll work even better on a Monday, and if you have Monday off for some god awful reason (maybe Columbus Day) just pretend Tuesday is Monday.  But Mondays are ideal.

Have you ever seen the video of the kid who sticks his hand on a hot stove and leaves it there but doesn’t pull away, doesn’t wince?  The kid just leaves his hand there because he was born without pain receptors. Being tired is like that.

Yesterday at work someone called to ask me a question over the phone.  I don’t remember exactly what they asked. Something about “responsibility”, something about “ownership”, something about something something, something about this, something about that, something or other.  Something. On any other day I would’ve been mad at myself for listening for so long. But I remember how oh so very tired I was. I remember my nods on auto-pilot and the blissful feeling of the fog inflating my head – a cloud of apathy, rolling through the vast landscapes of my imagination.

I know the feeling of tired on my lips, uncontrollably unearthed, untethered, unbound to anything sensical, but vaguely recognizable as something tangible.  It is something here and now. It is crossing a threshold, putting into motion an irreversible journey where there is no sense of adventure, no excitement, but simply learning how to function as a zombie in your own body.  Forget energy, you don’t want to waste the tired. Conscious control is at a minimum and maximum instinct is just above base level. A happy medium. Thinking about the future just takes too much effort. The past doesn’t exist.

When you are tired – and I mean really tired – nothing matters.  Nothing anyone can say can hurt you, or uplift you if I’m being honest.  The only thing that whispers itself through the back of your mind is the hope that when you’re done with the day, sleep is going to engulf and consume you, embrace and exhume you, but only after it’s over and your tired is spent.

(2 hours of sleep)