Life

Too Tired for Your Own Good

The realization that you are fatigued is the first step to resolution

Published

9 months ago

June 26, 2022

Jeff Davidson

It’s Sunday. Go back to bed and then return to this article!

Based on what you do an average day, it is understandable that sometimes you feel very tired, but when is the tired feeling that you have bordering on danger? Many signs exist, among them these:

1. Your fatigue is prolonged. Getting several nights of extra sleep in a row or sleeping for an entire weekend doesn’t seem to put a dent in your feeling of fatigue. Perhaps worse, you feel as if you “will never catch up.”
2. You experience indigestion or lack of appetite. You normally look forward to meals, but when highly fatigued, you have trouble getting them down. Maybe, you’re eating less.
3. Loss of sex drive. This isn’t as obvious a sign as you might think. Loss of your libido usually takes place a little bit at a time, such that you don’t notice what’s going on. Your partner probably will, though.
4. You begin to experience trouble getting to sleep, if not outright insomnia. During the night, you find yourself waking more often or tossing back and forth, and then to exacerbate the situation, you spend the rest of the night worrying that you’re not getting good sleep.
5. You feel tired in the morning even after getting a full night’s sleep. Realistically, there’s no reason for this. If by 9:30 or 10:00 in the morning, you can hardly keep your head up, it’s time to take heed.
6. Your ability to focus on the task at hand is diminished. Your powers of concentration are not what they have been in the past. Generally, this is not due to your aging.
7. You feel that you’re no longer in control. In many ways, this is the most insidious of the signs. You doze at highly inopportune moments, such as in an important meeting, or when driving.

Not Enough Sleep, but Otherwise Functional

Here’s a second list of indicators showing that you’re not getting enough sleep, but perhaps you’re not at the danger level:

Your eyes are red.
You’re not mentally sharp.
You avoid tasks that involve adding up numbers.
You find yourself daydreaming often.
In situations with others you simply go through the motions.
You don’t want to handle any phone calls if you can help it.
You watch the clock frequently throughout the day, hoping it will go by more quickly.

Before I learned how to keep my stress level in check, I used to look forward to going to the dentist. When I got to the dentist’s chair, and they tilted the seat back, it was one of the few times during the day where I actually reclined and had relatively little to do. If there wasn’t to be any drilling or serious poking during the session, such as a routine visit or cleaning, in some cases I became so relaxed that I didn’t want to leave. For me, that was an indication that I was highly fatigued.

You probably have your own personal corollaries to this. The realization that you are fatigued is the first step to increasing your efficiency and defeating the problem. A life of constant exhaustion, no matter what else you accomplish, is not a desirable situation. No one, however, is coming to bail you out.

The road back from exhaustion starts with self-awareness, then resolve, then action. Will today be that day?

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Eight Dysphemisms to Start Your Week

A dysphemism is a word or phrase that is more offensive than the words it is replacing

Published

1 day ago

March 20, 2023

Jeff Davidson

A “euphemism” is the substitution of an agreeable or inoffensive expression for one that might suggest something more bluntly or offend others, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. To say, for example, “He doesn’t have all his marbles,” is regarded as gentler than saying “He is stark raving insane.”

The Mighty Dysphemism

The opposite of a euphemism is a “dysphemism.” A dysphemism is a word or phrase that is more offensive, blunt, or harsh than the word or phrase which it is replacing. For example, instead of stating that the Manhattan District Attorney is “cognitively challenged,” you refer to him instead as a “total partisan whack job.”

For your amusement, at the least, here are eight dysphemism followed by the kinder, gentler, or at least more definitive terminology of what is being said:

“Biting off more than you can chew” – Orally extracting an amount of edible matter that exceeds what one is comfortably able to masticate.

“That’s a load of B.S.” – Your assertion reminds one of bovine excretion.

“Sh__faced” – Bearing an expression that one normally associates with the act of removing solid waste from the body.

“Can’t tell your ass from your elbow” – Unable to differentiate between your dorsal side orifice and the joint connecting your forearm and upper arm.

“Stepping in a pile of crap” – A pedestrian venture into an accumulation of animal or human waste.

“Go F-yourself” – Engage in the act of physical consummation with yourself.

“Up to your eyeballs in crap” – Finding yourself surrounded at the visual level by unpleasantly aromatic organic waste.

“Carnal knowledge” – Having a close encounter with another, free of garments and other impediments, leading to direct tactile stimulation.

A True Time Saver

Thank goodness for dysphemisms. In a most fundamental way, they are true time-savers. Without them, we’d be groping for tedious phrasing all day long. “Up your nose with a rubber hose,” if you don’t “catch my drift.”

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Life

Nobody Gets Enough Rest

Few adults sleep each night for all that they need

Published

3 days ago

March 19, 2023

Jeff Davidson

Here is my creation, Nobody Gets Enough Rest, based on the theme of Nobody Does It Better, original music by Marvin Hamlisch, with lyrics by Carol Bayer Sager, and sung by Carly Simon:

Nobody Gets Enough Rest
by Jeff Davidson © 2023

Nobody gets enough rest,
no one gets all that they need.
Too many people gyp their sleep time:
When it comes to rest… they’re in neeeeeed…

I wasn’t looking
but somehow they found me,
all of the things that lengthen my day aaaaaaaaay.
Like the TV above me
and the friends who love me,
up all night so we can play aaaaaaaaay.

Nobody gets enough rest,
no one gets all that they need.
Nobody takes enough naps, aaaand
sure enough, we’re all in nee ee ee eeed.

Nobody gets enough rest,
no one sleeps all that they need.
Yet people come to work like its
some kind of brea ee ee ee ee eeze.

The way that it’s going, all day-long going
there’s got to be some kind of pau au au au ause,
That keeps us from running,
all 24 hours, disobeying nature’s basic law aw aw aw aw.

Nobody gets enough rest,
no one gets all that they need.
Too many people gyp their sleep time:
When it comes to rest… they’re in nee ee eed…

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