The psychology of tiredness

Why don't we go to sleep earlier?

You know, like you vow to every morning when you get up, when your body is screaming out, begging you to stay horizontal? Insisting that you're at the end of your tether, there is absolutely no chance you will get through today unless you have another couple of hours' kip.

Lights out by 10pm tonight, my husband and I often agree, before dawn. Sometimes even 9:30pm, we promise eachother, like deluded fools.

We all have our own ways of getting through the day. Coffee, music, hard drugs, exercise - whatever works for you. Lots of people have a dip at some point, when they renew their vow about having an early night. Often it's in the afternoon, seated in front of a computer, when they realise they've only actually done a total of half an hour's work since lunchtime, and decide to cover this up in plain sight by proclaiming dramatically - "I need sugar!".

But then, somehow, evening comes around, you're in bed, and this odd second wind blows in. Why not read another chapter? Catch up with twitter? Watch another episode, because Netflix is going to play it in 15 seconds anyway, and you can't find the remote control? Answer that work e-mail, because then you can go to sleep feeling smug because you've had the last word?

"Actually, I don't feel that tired," you tell your other half, with a note of wonder in your voice. (They then misinterpret you, get their hopes up, and let's not go there.)

And so the cycle carries on. It is one of the things I find most annoying about myself.

Since you ask, the list of things I find annoying can be separated into three subsets:

Things that are my own fault

• The scales in the bathroom giving me the wrong answer when I stand on them.
• Getting really wound up about some work thing that doesn't merit the effort, or fixating on an insurmountable problem that dissolves when you put it in perspective that evening at rioja o'clocka.
• The 40 children coming to Logie and Felix's birthday party this Saturday. Forty. FOUR-TEEEEE.

Things that involve a lack of respect from others

• When Logie has a runny nose, or a milk moustache, he heads towards me. Not to get a tissue, but to literally wipe himself on me. Whatever I am wearing. To him, I am a piece of kitchen roll in human form. 
• Cab drivers asking "Wet enough for you?" when it's raining.
• Passive-aggressive women saying "Do you like my trousers? You should get some, they go up to absolutely huge sizes, and they're really good quality."

Things I just find baffling

• Modern loos with two buttons for flushing. Which is which? I'm really asking. I don't know. I can see the logic for both. And when one is a small jigsaw piece of a bigger button - do you press both at the same time in some circs or what? I am genuinely at a loss on so many occasions, and I fear the same could be said for much of the nation. But we're all too embarrassed to ask. Presumably our children are being taught the rules in school these days, so at least they will grow up knowing what to do. But otherwise how were we supposed to know? Was there a memo? A public health campaign, with posters at the GP? Maybe it's perfectly obvious to the rest of you, but I like to get these things right.
• People who wear their staff passes around their necks on the commute to and from work.
• Signs above letterboxes that say 'No junk mail please'. You know they don't actually work, right? The people posting pizza leaflets and minicab cards through your door don't count their special offer as junk. They might not even be able to read.

But I suspect the sleep thing is a bad habit that many of us share. I sort of agree with people who won't tolerate any "I'm just so tired" whinging, on a just go to sleep earlier/don't go out every night then/your job's actually not that hard basis. But I venture there is something deeper going on.

Because even people who really are that tired, the mothers of small babies, who are genuinely sleep-deprived and so exhausted they could puke...they sometimes do it too. They treat themselves to a bath after supper and kid themselves that it might actually sleep through the night tonight. They don't 'just' sleep in the day whenever the baby sleeps. 

Even they fall victim to the heady sensation of doing something nice. Of being conscious, briefly free of things you have to do, and free to do things you want to do. It's exhilarating. It's distracting. It's stupid, but you always were a bit of a rebel. It gives you power. And who feels like that when they're asleep?