Hit the snooze button, again and again...

How tired do you have to be to be too tired? As I get older, I think being tired is simply a way of life. I just don't know how people do all that they do, day in and day out and then accomplish anything meaningful. However, at times, there just seems to be no choice but to go on empty.

When I was a kid, I remember being so tired at times that I'd come home after playing and just go to bed, without even eating supper. My Dad recently told me that he never saw a kid eat as much as I did when I was younger, so for me to skip dinner, must have been extreme, because I loved to eat and still do.

Throughout my school years, I often found myself falling asleep before studying or even during some classes. Fortunately, I must have absorbed enough to get through those various levels of education and eventually made it into the work force. Although residency was quite exhausting, it paled in comparison to those early years of parenthood. I remember getting up nights with my daughter and just how incredibly sleep deprived I was, but that sacrifice was worth all those sleepless nights.

Even today, there doesn't seem to be enough time in each day to achieve all that "rests" on the docket, and sleep remains a premium. My friends and I routinely start each day with some sort of exercise routine, and occasionally, one or perhaps more of us don't show up. The excuse typically is, "I was just too tired" or "after I set the alarm, I never heard it go off" to list a few. Under most circumstances, at least for me, the desire to sleep usually supercedes my will to work.

How can one reach that reasonable balance between enough sleep and accomplishing all those tasks? I sure wish I had a solution to that question. I guess the next time the alarm goes off, and I sleep through it or frankly can't "rise" to the occasion, I am not going to worry. It must be my internal clock telling me that I am on system overload, and in the immortal words of Scotty from Star Trek, "the ship can't take it anymore; she's burning up". That's when I know it's time to cool my engines. Sweet dreams, and see you in the morning, I think!