A Different Kind of Tired

There is the tired you feel after a hard week. And then there is the tired that accumulates beneath the hard weeks, slowly, for years, until it becomes the background frequency of your life.

I know both kinds.

The first one is manageable. Sleep repairs it. A good weekend helps. The second one is not repaired by sleep alone, because it isn't really about the quantity of what you've done. It's about the weight of being the one who manages, chronically, without a real handover, without a genuine period of not-knowing what the household needs.

The second kind is what I'm trying to address.

Not by doing less — though less would be fine. By changing the structure underneath. So that on the hard weeks, the weight is distributed. So that when I'm exhausted, the household doesn't require more of me to keep running. So that there is another person who, on a Tuesday evening in October when everything is difficult, notices that the children need something and does the noticing without being prompted.

This is the work under the work. Getting the practical distribution right helps, but it doesn't fully address this. What addresses this is the other person building the same muscle — the noticing muscle, the anticipating muscle, the being-responsible muscle — until it's automatic.

We are working on it. Some weeks more successfully than others.