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Your regular, everyday tiredness. Vague, unspecified feelings of exhaustion. Where you go through life feeling like if you could ONLY GET ONE NIGHT’S REALLY GREAT SLEEP, everything would be fixed.
The fatigue equivalent of a 24-hour bug. A single day when you feel appalling, like after a really bad night’s sleep. (Often seen on Mondays due to a nocturnal attack of the Sunday Night Fear.)
Symptoms: Feelings of general crappiness. Difficulty moving some muscles. Crankiness level noticeably raised.
This type of tiredness will require the duvet to be applied to the sofa immediately on returning home.
Those times when your intense weekend somehow bleeds into your entire week. So that even by Thursday, even when you’ve been REALLY GOOD and not eaten too many breakfast rolls, you still feel like your brain has been extracted through your ear and replaced with damp newspapers.
Total, cumulative, in-the-bones tiredness brought on by too many long days. The kind that you can’t seem to shake no matter how many hours you sleep for. Feeling of needing a holiday, even if you’ve just come back from a holiday.
Note: wine is not a useful remedy, even though it seems that way at the time.
Odd aches and pains, feelings of general unwellness, conviction that that sore throat means you’re coming down with a flesh-eating bug/stomach ulcer/Ebola.
Basically it starts with a weird tingle on your leg, and ends with you being convinced that death is mere days away and you should probably make some final calls.
Where you’re filled with that weird jittery nervous energy that doesn’t help you do anything but means you laugh hysterically at your co-worker’s fart jokes. And leap out of your seat in panic when someone drops a teaspoon.
When occasionally, for reasons unknown to science and in a way that is totally impossible to achieve on purpose or replicate, you wake up feeling AMAZING and like you’ve finally had the night’s sleep you’ve been needing for years.
Treasure those few hours, because it’s an illusion. By evening you’ll be shattered again.
Saturday 23 November, 2024
Saturday 23 November, 2024
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The 8 types of tiredness we've all experienced
1. The Basic
Your regular, everyday tiredness. Vague, unspecified feelings of exhaustion. Where you go through life feeling like if you could ONLY GET ONE NIGHT’S REALLY GREAT SLEEP, everything would be fixed.
Also known as “normality”.
2. The One-Day Crash
The fatigue equivalent of a 24-hour bug. A single day when you feel appalling, like after a really bad night’s sleep. (Often seen on Mondays due to a nocturnal attack of the Sunday Night Fear.)
Symptoms: Feelings of general crappiness. Difficulty moving some muscles. Crankiness level noticeably raised.
This type of tiredness will require the duvet to be applied to the sofa immediately on returning home.
3. The Aprés-Weekend
Those times when your intense weekend somehow bleeds into your entire week. So that even by Thursday, even when you’ve been REALLY GOOD and not eaten too many breakfast rolls, you still feel like your brain has been extracted through your ear and replaced with damp newspapers.
4. The Pit Of Despair
Total, cumulative, in-the-bones tiredness brought on by too many long days. The kind that you can’t seem to shake no matter how many hours you sleep for. Feeling of needing a holiday, even if you’ve just come back from a holiday.
Note: wine is not a useful remedy, even though it seems that way at the time.
5. The Death Is Nigh
Odd aches and pains, feelings of general unwellness, conviction that that sore throat means you’re coming down with a flesh-eating bug/stomach ulcer/Ebola.
Basically it starts with a weird tingle on your leg, and ends with you being convinced that death is mere days away and you should probably make some final calls.
6. The Unnatural Energy
Where you’re filled with that weird jittery nervous energy that doesn’t help you do anything but means you laugh hysterically at your co-worker’s fart jokes. And leap out of your seat in panic when someone drops a teaspoon.
COFFEE DOESN’T ALWAYS HELP.
7. The Total War
Frantic, possibly twitching. Hair and clothes dishevelled. Thousand-yard stare that bores into your very soul. Flinches at the mention of ‘sleep’.
No cure.
(This condition is also known as ‘The New Parent’.)
8. And… The Jackpot
When occasionally, for reasons unknown to science and in a way that is totally impossible to achieve on purpose or replicate, you wake up feeling AMAZING and like you’ve finally had the night’s sleep you’ve been needing for years.
Treasure those few hours, because it’s an illusion. By evening you’ll be shattered again.
All photos via the always-hilarious Hungover Owls on Tumblr. Inspired by this post.
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