Thursday, March 04, 2010

Rant Thursday - Fatigue Edition

This week's rant, I'm afraid, will be just as brief as last week's. I'm tired, folks. I've been working for two weeks on the same monster report (in fact, I took my laptop with me today and worked on it while I was waiting with Jamie to see his pediatrician. He has yet another ear infection.) So my rant this week is about being tired. All. The. Time. I wake up tired, I go through my day tired. Get home tired. Trudge through the evening tired. Then I go to bed. What do I do when I get there? Stare at the ceiling. Insomnia's a pain, yo. When I do finally fall asleep, it's only to have to get up in four hours or whatever and do it all again. Then I got on the scale at work today and about had a heart attack. But I'm too tired by the time I get home to do anything about it. Being tired all the time stinks. So tell me, when coffee fails, Mt. Dew leaves you dozing and you don't have one scrap of energy left in your body, how do you keep going? Got any secret, sure-fire energy boosters? Please share! I'd love to have some new things to try to get me through my day.

Oh, yeah, and if you have something you want to rant about - please, feel free to leave it in the comments section. I want to know I'm not the only ranting and raving person in the blogosphere.

4 comments:

Suze said...

I drink plenty of caffeine, sometimes tea in the afternoon. I think what you should do, if you can afford it, is take a day off, like a Friday to make it a long weekend. Give yourself that. Read a book, take a nap.

I wish I had suggestions for the insomnia but I don't. It was a horrible problem for me during pregnancy and it nearly drove me out of my mind. I had to take sleeping pills once or twice but obviously that's not a good long-term solution.

Sorry about the ear infection. no fun! I had them until i was about Jamie's age, too. Hopefully he'll grow out of them soon.

Animal said...

The best solution *I* know of is the one that's causing all the problems in the first place: namely, you need to be able to relax and have some "down time." Only, don't ask me how to go about that. Vicious cycle, downward spiral, you name it...however you want to describe things, you just need more quality sleep. If you can work that time in, you should start to come back online.

Being an adult - THE adult, in your case - sucks sometimes, don't it?

Jessi said...

Are you normally an insomniac? I'm not, so when I go through those periods, sometimes what I need is a restart. I'll take a Tylenol PM for two or three days and then I'm good to go again. Sleeping like a baby.

I agree though that the only way to really fix this is to stress less and unwind more. Easier said than done, I know.

ann said...

unless it's health related? Have you ever had your thyroid checked?

I've only struggled with sleeplessness a few times in my life, and those times were always triggered by some major, easily identified event. But I have had trouble falling asleep before in general, and the thing that has helped me is probably impossible for you. My mother in law, when she visited us, used to point out to me when I was tired and would insist that I take a nap. A. I didn't know before she came that when I felt that way it was because I was tired, and so getting to know that feeling helped a lot, and B. I was free to go to sleep when I was tired, which also obviuosly helped a lot. So if you know when you're getting sleepy, and can go to sleep, that's helpful. But I am not an idiot and realize that is not your problem. (Well, sometimes I'm an idiot.) But I wanted to contribute my advice anyawy.

The other thing that has helped me is to not watch tv when it's getting close to time for me to go to sleep. When the tv is not on, I can totally tell when it's time for me to go to sleep. But if it is, I sometimes miss my window. And when I do, then I struggle to get to sleep--if I stay awake too long after I start to get sleepy, I can't fall asleep. Daniel sees me rushing to bed when the feeling hits, and he's like, "What are you doing?" He makes fun of me. (He also does that when I have the urgent need to pee, and sometimes even squeezes my belly, which is totally a dangerous move for him and our carpet.)

The other things I can think of are making sure you are drinking water (being dehydrated messes with me in all kinds of ways), getting enough protein (this helps my friend a lot--she actually keeps protein drinks in her fridge for this purpose, whenever she can't get to sleep--though I remember you being a pretty good meat eater), and visiting a sleep clinic. Again, not always doable. But if it is a possibility for you, I think it is totally worth it for a single mom to be able to advance a few inches up the "I'm in control of my life" ladder.