AS I PLEASE XII: EXHAUSTED EDITION
Tonight I was planning on publishing a blog called "Red Flags." I actually spent some hours pondering how I would compose it as I walked along the Rail Trail yesterday after work, and then again today: I am however too goddamned tired to put it all together. It will have to wait 'til Saturday. However, being as I tired as I am right now, at exactly 9:00 PM, has got me thinking a lot about, well, being tired, and how the experience changes as you grow older.
* As a kid, tiredness is something you fight against. This begins, I believe, in infancy: a tired baby will cry, fuss, flail its tiny limbs, do just about anything but what it wants to do, which is sleep. Later, as a small and finally a large, sub-adult child, I fought against tiredness with a kind of bitter emnity. On weekends this could be well understood, since every conscious hour away from school was nectar to be savored. It made less sense on schoolnights, when there was no real reward and hefty penalty for staying up late: neverthless, I often did just that. This habit continued into high school and through college, and I believe in retrospect that children, and later teenagers, simply resent going to bed. It may be that their energy levels are higher to begin with and thus harder to exhaust, it may be that they are naturally noctural, but by God they do not like going to sleep.
* This is bizarre, because I have seldom encountered a child, teenager, or late college-age student who doesn't excel at sleeping. The sort of sleep one gets say, at the age of 9, or 19 for that matter, is of the very highest quantity and quality, far superior to the sleep people in even early middle age get except on their best nights. This makes the resentment the young feel about going to bed all the more ironic, since when they hit their 30s they will begin to crave deep, restful slumber, but achieve it less often, and less satisfyingly, than they did previously. Hell, by the time I was 25 years old, I was already too exhausted on Fridays to do much more than take my girlfriend to an early dinner, have a drink, and then go home to bed. The last thing I wanted to do was the first thing I'd wanted to on Fridays just a few short years before, which was go out and party.
* Because real adults often have trouble getting to sleep, or staying asleep, or achieving sleep which is truly restful even if the hours clocked are seemingly sufficient, they tend to welcome the very fatigue that they warred against as youths, when the act of being tired was viewed almost as an affliction that had to be overcome. I vividly remember the peer pressure, expressed usually as verbal abuse, which occurred in college when someone (me) used to start fading before the others in his group. Seldom if ever was this individual (me) simply allowed to leave and go to bed. Oh no. They were harrangued, plied with shots or more beer, and generally bullied into several extra hours of consciousness they did not want. And they always gave into this bullying, because deep down, they felt their tired state was a sign of weakness that had to be combatted.
* Starting in the middle-20s, feelings of weariness are, if not actually welcomed, generally accepted by the weary. By my later 20s, instead of raising hell on Fridays, or even just going to the gym, I began to greatly enjoy the ritual of disconnecting my phone, double locking my door, turning down most of the lights and essentially turning my apartment into a diving bell that may as well have been at the bottom of the sea. Pajama-type clothing was donned as soon as I was alone, and the hours between arrival and actual bedtime were essentially spent in a state of pre-sleep, where I spoke to no one, drank comforting hot beverages, and either watched TV or read a book in bed.
* This transition strikes most twentysomethings as somewhat embarrassing. Like baldness or decline in eyesight or sudden weight gain, it was deemed a sign of ageing, and thus something to be ridiculed, denied, fought against. However, since nobody really wants to fight against it -- pajamas are comfortable, hot tea on winter tights is soothing, and a good book or classic TV program provides great comfort after a rough week in the salt mines -- a lot of lies have to be told, a lot of exuses have to be made, to keep up the front that you are still the hellraiser you used to be, until at last you throw away all pretense and tell your friends you just want to fucking go to sleep.
* As we get older and the quality of our rest declines, we finally make note -- years too late -- that, holy shit, there is a connection between how much sleep we have and how well we function the next day at work. An early twentysomething can, as a rule, drink and smoke and screw themselves insensible 'til three in the morning, wake up at seven, slam a cup of coffee, take a cold shower, and still manage to have a prodctive workday: what's more, they can repeat the whole debauchery the next night. A fortysomething who stays up too late, drinks too much and crashes after midnight may as well not come to work the next day. He will barely be able to get out of bed, arrive late to his job, and once there do little but suck down company coffee while staring glassily at his computer, often unable to even remember his password, his extension, or his own middle name. What's more, when he arrives home, he will probably sleep for two hours in front of the television, and then awake even more depressed, confused and exhausted than he was before.
* Pushing through tiredness is also much more difficult as a fellow of fifty than it was when I was, say, thirty. This is because the fabled "second wind," which I first encountered in college and which allowed me to stay up for 24 hours at a crack without the aid of drugs, tends to wave bye-bye at some point and ne'er returns. "Pushing through" is still possible, but goddamn, is it hard: when I was working on Face Off back in 2012 or so, I used to arrive at the studio around three in the afternoon and work until somewhere between three and nine the next morning, almost without a break. At the time I was forty years old, and to do this sort of thing I required all the coffee Krispy Kreme could supply. Nevertheless, the entire next day was a dead loss. I was unable to sleep when I got home, but also unable to function. I did not have the mental powers even to watch television. I just sort of existed, in a mindless stupor.
* As a young-un, I often found exercise would revive my mind and body when I was in a state of physical and mental tiredness. A few miles around the jogging track could work wonders: they were nearly as effective as sleep. As an ancient relic, however, I now find that exercise is harder when tired, and provides no actual benefit in terms of waking me up. I may feel better afterward, I may actually be healthier, but instead of being just tired, I am now tired...and sweaty.
* For all of this, the amount of sleep I require to function is much lower now than it was when I was a kid. Back then, I required up to twelve hours: as a younger grown man, about nine: and as a middle-aged one, just under eight. I actually noticed at the age of thirty that I was horribly exhausted in the mornings after seven hours of sleep, but on weekends, would sleep only an extra hour at the most, and then wake feeling completely rested. Some of this was probably psychological, but most of it was physical: evidently "a good night's rest" is really a question of whether you got that last crucial 45 minutes or not.
* As depressing as all of this sounds, I have to say that Dan Henderson's remark that "I can do everything at forty that I could at twenty, just not as fast" actually does hold true even when you're fifty. Some of it is genetics, some of it is how well or poorly you treat yourself, but most of it is simply attitude. If one accepts that life is about change, unpleasant change first and foremost, then one accepts the necessity of flexibility. I woke up tired today, but I managed a ten hour workday that also involved about 40+ miles of driving, a bench trial, multiple court heatings, innumerable phone calls, a haircut, a four mile walk, a Perry Mason TV movie ("The Case of the Scandalous Scoundrel"), and writing this blog. I even had time for a beer. So yeah, I can still power through. It just takes more power than it used to.
It's now 9:58 PM, and I am about to hit the rack. Whether or not I will actually sleep through the night and greet Thursday with a saucy, Errol Flynn-like grin and a flippant remark, or just groan pitifully and stare in disbelief at my bedside clock, is unknown to me. But I just remember the words of Joyce Rochelle:
We all grow tired eventually; it happens to everyone. Even the sun, at the close of the year, is no longer a morning person.
* As a kid, tiredness is something you fight against. This begins, I believe, in infancy: a tired baby will cry, fuss, flail its tiny limbs, do just about anything but what it wants to do, which is sleep. Later, as a small and finally a large, sub-adult child, I fought against tiredness with a kind of bitter emnity. On weekends this could be well understood, since every conscious hour away from school was nectar to be savored. It made less sense on schoolnights, when there was no real reward and hefty penalty for staying up late: neverthless, I often did just that. This habit continued into high school and through college, and I believe in retrospect that children, and later teenagers, simply resent going to bed. It may be that their energy levels are higher to begin with and thus harder to exhaust, it may be that they are naturally noctural, but by God they do not like going to sleep.
* This is bizarre, because I have seldom encountered a child, teenager, or late college-age student who doesn't excel at sleeping. The sort of sleep one gets say, at the age of 9, or 19 for that matter, is of the very highest quantity and quality, far superior to the sleep people in even early middle age get except on their best nights. This makes the resentment the young feel about going to bed all the more ironic, since when they hit their 30s they will begin to crave deep, restful slumber, but achieve it less often, and less satisfyingly, than they did previously. Hell, by the time I was 25 years old, I was already too exhausted on Fridays to do much more than take my girlfriend to an early dinner, have a drink, and then go home to bed. The last thing I wanted to do was the first thing I'd wanted to on Fridays just a few short years before, which was go out and party.
* Because real adults often have trouble getting to sleep, or staying asleep, or achieving sleep which is truly restful even if the hours clocked are seemingly sufficient, they tend to welcome the very fatigue that they warred against as youths, when the act of being tired was viewed almost as an affliction that had to be overcome. I vividly remember the peer pressure, expressed usually as verbal abuse, which occurred in college when someone (me) used to start fading before the others in his group. Seldom if ever was this individual (me) simply allowed to leave and go to bed. Oh no. They were harrangued, plied with shots or more beer, and generally bullied into several extra hours of consciousness they did not want. And they always gave into this bullying, because deep down, they felt their tired state was a sign of weakness that had to be combatted.
* Starting in the middle-20s, feelings of weariness are, if not actually welcomed, generally accepted by the weary. By my later 20s, instead of raising hell on Fridays, or even just going to the gym, I began to greatly enjoy the ritual of disconnecting my phone, double locking my door, turning down most of the lights and essentially turning my apartment into a diving bell that may as well have been at the bottom of the sea. Pajama-type clothing was donned as soon as I was alone, and the hours between arrival and actual bedtime were essentially spent in a state of pre-sleep, where I spoke to no one, drank comforting hot beverages, and either watched TV or read a book in bed.
* This transition strikes most twentysomethings as somewhat embarrassing. Like baldness or decline in eyesight or sudden weight gain, it was deemed a sign of ageing, and thus something to be ridiculed, denied, fought against. However, since nobody really wants to fight against it -- pajamas are comfortable, hot tea on winter tights is soothing, and a good book or classic TV program provides great comfort after a rough week in the salt mines -- a lot of lies have to be told, a lot of exuses have to be made, to keep up the front that you are still the hellraiser you used to be, until at last you throw away all pretense and tell your friends you just want to fucking go to sleep.
* As we get older and the quality of our rest declines, we finally make note -- years too late -- that, holy shit, there is a connection between how much sleep we have and how well we function the next day at work. An early twentysomething can, as a rule, drink and smoke and screw themselves insensible 'til three in the morning, wake up at seven, slam a cup of coffee, take a cold shower, and still manage to have a prodctive workday: what's more, they can repeat the whole debauchery the next night. A fortysomething who stays up too late, drinks too much and crashes after midnight may as well not come to work the next day. He will barely be able to get out of bed, arrive late to his job, and once there do little but suck down company coffee while staring glassily at his computer, often unable to even remember his password, his extension, or his own middle name. What's more, when he arrives home, he will probably sleep for two hours in front of the television, and then awake even more depressed, confused and exhausted than he was before.
* Pushing through tiredness is also much more difficult as a fellow of fifty than it was when I was, say, thirty. This is because the fabled "second wind," which I first encountered in college and which allowed me to stay up for 24 hours at a crack without the aid of drugs, tends to wave bye-bye at some point and ne'er returns. "Pushing through" is still possible, but goddamn, is it hard: when I was working on Face Off back in 2012 or so, I used to arrive at the studio around three in the afternoon and work until somewhere between three and nine the next morning, almost without a break. At the time I was forty years old, and to do this sort of thing I required all the coffee Krispy Kreme could supply. Nevertheless, the entire next day was a dead loss. I was unable to sleep when I got home, but also unable to function. I did not have the mental powers even to watch television. I just sort of existed, in a mindless stupor.
* As a young-un, I often found exercise would revive my mind and body when I was in a state of physical and mental tiredness. A few miles around the jogging track could work wonders: they were nearly as effective as sleep. As an ancient relic, however, I now find that exercise is harder when tired, and provides no actual benefit in terms of waking me up. I may feel better afterward, I may actually be healthier, but instead of being just tired, I am now tired...and sweaty.
* For all of this, the amount of sleep I require to function is much lower now than it was when I was a kid. Back then, I required up to twelve hours: as a younger grown man, about nine: and as a middle-aged one, just under eight. I actually noticed at the age of thirty that I was horribly exhausted in the mornings after seven hours of sleep, but on weekends, would sleep only an extra hour at the most, and then wake feeling completely rested. Some of this was probably psychological, but most of it was physical: evidently "a good night's rest" is really a question of whether you got that last crucial 45 minutes or not.
* As depressing as all of this sounds, I have to say that Dan Henderson's remark that "I can do everything at forty that I could at twenty, just not as fast" actually does hold true even when you're fifty. Some of it is genetics, some of it is how well or poorly you treat yourself, but most of it is simply attitude. If one accepts that life is about change, unpleasant change first and foremost, then one accepts the necessity of flexibility. I woke up tired today, but I managed a ten hour workday that also involved about 40+ miles of driving, a bench trial, multiple court heatings, innumerable phone calls, a haircut, a four mile walk, a Perry Mason TV movie ("The Case of the Scandalous Scoundrel"), and writing this blog. I even had time for a beer. So yeah, I can still power through. It just takes more power than it used to.
It's now 9:58 PM, and I am about to hit the rack. Whether or not I will actually sleep through the night and greet Thursday with a saucy, Errol Flynn-like grin and a flippant remark, or just groan pitifully and stare in disbelief at my bedside clock, is unknown to me. But I just remember the words of Joyce Rochelle:
We all grow tired eventually; it happens to everyone. Even the sun, at the close of the year, is no longer a morning person.
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