I mean a lot of things when I say I'm tired, and I misdiagnose myself with the wrong tired all the time. It's not the worst problem to have as the solutions are roughly the same, but it would be better to handle things directly. Napping improves basically everything, as recovery time and mental distance and placebo tend to do. But if I'm dehydrated, I should have just drunk more water.
However, thinking through specific symptoms or potential causes in the moment is hard . That's why I have physiological debugging, because it's easier to work through a list of external behaviors than evaluate internal state. Regardless, that's not good enough.
For example, I'm exceedingly bad at recognizing when I'm tired from heat because past a certain degree threshold everything registers as simply "too warm", well before the threshold which makes me tired. It's when the temperature goes down that I retroactively piece together the issue, or if I get enough clarity of mind to match the specific feeling to overheating.
I know very well the difference between the overheating headache, the sleep deprivation headache, and the overworked headache, but I can't put it into adequate words, and things without words are hard to reason about. Especially if, for example, if I have a headache.
So here's my rough taxonomy for types of tired. There's two axes, physical/mental and lack/overuse. They aren't exclusive or based in any medical knowledge, it's the groupings which make it easy for me match symptoms to issues. I use symptom to mean "something I consistently notice is different", not in any formal sense.
Is this the sleepy headache? No? Okay, what about hazy?
Much easier than the open-ended "what kind of headache is this?"
Standard disclaimer, this isn't medical advice and you should not steal this, because it's selected to match my mental quirks. If you like the idea, use it as a starting point to figure out your own taxonomy.
Sleepy (Mental Lack)
Sleepy, of course, is when I've been sleeping too little, poorly, or irregularly. It's arguably a physical issue rather than a mental one, but I feel it mentally more than physically. The number of mornings I've spent walking half asleep can attest to that.
Physical symptoms include eyes closing involuntarily and a certain type of piercing headache of course, but the biggest giveaway is the inability to retain focus. I can focus on a thing fine, but it pulls itself into dream logic tangents even while I'm awake.
There is only one solution, and it's not caffeine.
Faint (Physical Lack)
Faint is caused by almost any other bodily need. Dehydration, not enough good food, too hot, too noisy. Both the easiest and hardest of the four to pin down.
The thresholds for symptoms are incredibly inconsistent, but I know exactly what they feel like when they arrive. When it's too noisy I get either a mental buzz I can't dismiss or a strange airiness as I subconsciously try to tune things out. Dehydration is sharper, hunger is more flickery, heat is having the energy to move but the mental feeling that I've just finished an hour of exercise without the post-workout high.
It's a broad category with many possible targeted fixes, but once the problem is clear so is the cure.
Worn Out (Physical Overuse)
I typically call this exhaustion, though I use that to mean other things as well. All the obvious causes, too much movement or muscle exertion with too little rest.
It has mental side-effects, but the distinguishing feature is in the rest of the body. I feel it in my limbs when I've been doing too much with them.
Not much to do about it but rest.
Hazy (Mental Overuse)
Hazy covers any mental work. Social battery depletion, intellectual work, mental distress.
I find myself looking for distraction when I'm hazy to prevent myself from trying to think more, but they don't stick. Unlike sleepy, I can't even begin to focus on something when I'm hazy. It slips away before I've even caught it.
A nap will fix it, but music and a walk would do just as well.
- Rew
Nightly Notes
The weather has not been kind to me lately. All week it's been a war between the urge to go outside and stop decaying in a series of increasingly cramped rooms, and the knowledge that the outside will make me miserable.
Writing is a nice distraction.
- Rew