This weekend has been full of dancing. It's also been full of tired. I just slept 15 hours in a 24-hour period, and I'm not sick. (I think.) And I haven't pulled an allnighter or otherwise gotten significantly less sleep than usual any particular night in the past week or two.

Yeah. That tired.

I'm feeling pretty good now - I don't think another day or two of vacation would reveal that much more tiredness, honestly - but the multiple days of actually trying to breathe and relax and be tired turned out to be extremely well-timed. I knew I was exhausted, but I guess I'm so used to coping with exhaustion that I didn't realize quite how tired I was until Sunday. Early on Sunday morning, around the time I was driving, zombie-like, back from the all-night diner as the sun came up. That was around the time I snapped emotionally (I wasn't trying to do that - actually, I was trying to do the opposite!) and inadvertently, I think, gave myself permission to actually be tired... and so it happened again - even more - late on Sunday night, sometime around 10:20pm in the middle of dancing in Brookline, when I sat down to listen to the band playing and suddenly this wall hit me and I could barely get back up. Adrenaline had run out.

I crawled back home and crashed - and it was a hell of a crash. I think I was dreaming that I was talking to my parents on the phone because I woke up and found myself mumbling "sorry, reception must be bad, can't hear you, if you're still there call again" with my hand up by my ear with an invisible phone in it; I was so tired I wasn't quite sure if I was dreaming the phone call and thought "oh wait, silence on the other end, should probably complete it." (At that point I woke up and went "what the hell did I just do?" and realized that I had reached The Point Of Crashing Well And Good.)

This was most excellent. I'd been dancing as hard as possible over the weekend in an attempt to
get to the point of physical exhaustion that would let me feel the other kinds as well; mental and particularly emotional exhaustion are much easier for me to ignore, because even a partially-functional Mel-brain is pretty bloody functional. And then finally - finally! - I could actually rest. Which is... mostly what I did all day Monday. I slept through waffles. I slept through dancing. I slept through almost everything and mostly woke up for food.

Okay, okay. I also ran a meeting. But only one. And only part of it. And it was good to do something functional for the day. And then I had dinner after that and then I came back and I slept again. Just woke up from that. Feeling pretty good. Mentally, I know I'm clear now and it's going to get better (I know how to rest from this level of tiredness without having to completely wear myself out again - I know how to do work in a way that'll get me the rest of the way back up to normal... heck, this is pretty much normal already). Emotionally, I'm still on thin ice, but it's thin ice that can hold. It's getting better, too. Physically, I'm going to be extremely nice to myself the next few days because I need it, but... it's the sort of tiredness that feels good, reaches all over - and it's relatively light, it's not painful or anything in any point.

Anyway, I... think I'm back now. I'm normal-tired in a way that I think if I just try to clean up some stuff here I'll be able to go back to sleep and then wake up normally in a couple hours when it's actually morning. Then I can do things like go through my stack of reading and sort my mail and fold laundry and clean my room and all that stuff I was supposed to do this weekend (hoping to get to Plover patching here, but if not, it's next on my list of things to hack when I have free time - it will happen). Infrastructure upgrades. All that stuff.

It's June! Summer o' manic education travel basically begins... now. I needed this rest, and I'm glad the next few days are (relatively) light and still at home. I'm not complaining in the slightest and I'm not burnt-out by work (far from it) - it feels good to know I will be running hard all summer, and I've taken the rest I need to be able to do that now, and... yeah. (And I apologize in advance to anyone who has to deal with me in August. Vacation will be taken then, I swear.)

I dunno. This is strange; I actually let myself feel tired and rest - and it's not just "rest enough to be able to pump the adrenaline back up and keep on going," it's actual real rest. Much deeper rest than I'm used to. Maybe I'm not very good at it yet, maybe I didn't quite rest all the way I could have... but I'll get better at this (I hope).

Whoo. Wow. I think I may actually even go back to sleep now. Wow. This... feels oddly good.