Why Do I Feel So Tired Doing Nothing?
I always thought that I was just ‘feeling lazy’. Turns out I’d been ignoring my body’s cry for help.
I have the tendency to sleep at odd hours. Sometimes I fall asleep on the couch mid-morning while I’m still writing. Sometimes I fall asleep lying on the floor watching my baby. I’ve tried to make sense of this, but my sleep patterns weren’t easy to track. For a while, I used an app called Sleep Cycle hoping I’d get some answers. But I didn’t need an app to tell me that I was sleeping more than eight hours a day or not really working long hours. Somewhere in those months when my mind began oscillating between insomnia and hypersomnia, I was overcome by this idea that I might just be lazy.
Lazy.
God knows how long I’ve associated the lack of motivation to do anything with laziness. For several years I thought sleeping must be earned. See, Indian culture — like religion — is rife with assumptions about hard work and success. My mother used to say that time off was ‘deserved’ and teachers always talked about how the students that worked the hardest scored the highest marks. When I was in boarding school, the many priests who arrived to deliver sermons at the chapel always stressed on the Book of Proverbs; idleness was sinful; a lazy person never achieved things; God…
