There’s a kind of tired that sleep doesn’t fix.
I’ve been feeling it lately.
Not the “I stayed up too late” kind, but the kind where even when I sit down, something in me is still switched on.
Like my body is here, but the rest of me is still bracing — thinking, monitoring, responding, keeping things running.

Even creativity starts to feel like something I should be doing “properly”.

And that’s usually the point where I start wondering what’s wrong with me. Why I feel flat. Why simple things feel heavy. Why I suddenly don’t feel like doing anything at all.

But I’m starting to realise it’s not laziness. It’s what happens when you’ve been “on” for too long — not just busy, but alert. There’s a difference. You can be doing very little and still feel completely drained, because your system never really powered down.

I think a lot of us are living like that without even noticing. Always reachable, always thinking about the next thing, always slightly tense in the background. Even rest has turned into something we try to do well.

Lately, I’ve been experimenting with something much smaller. Not fixing anything or resetting my life — just softening. Sometimes that looks like lighting a candle and doing absolutely nothing for a few minutes. Or noticing that my shoulders are basically up near my ears and letting them drop. Or choosing one simple thing instead of trying to catch up on everything.

Nothing impressive, but it feels like telling my body, “you can stand down now.”

And interestingly, that’s when I start to feel a bit more like myself again. Not suddenly productive or magically energised — just a little more here.

So if you’ve been feeling flat, foggy, or unmotivated lately, before you assume something’s wrong with you, it might just be this. You might be tired of being “on” all the time.

And maybe what you need isn’t more discipline, but a little more space to come back to yourself.

If this feels familiar, I’m curious — where are you at right now? Fully charged, low battery… or “please don’t ask me to open another tab”??? Let me know in the comments below 🙂

x mimi

PS: This isn’t just a feeling — chronic stress genuinely keeps the nervous system switched on. Harvard Health explains it clearly without yelling about productivity.