I'm so tired . . . But I can't sleep

I am tired. I know this phrase is uttered hundreds of thousands of times a day, but still I’m going to add it once more. I am tired. Twice more. This morning, when the alarm went off, I actually cried. Okay, I whimpered and whined. But then, as I managed to untangle myself from the blankets and sit up on the edge of the bed to greet yet another day of work followed by more work, there were tears in my eyes. And I let them go.

If it weren’t for the fact that I am staying with friends and would have felt embarrassed by doing so, I would have gone into a full-blown, exhaustion-fueled crying fit right then and there. But I practiced restraint. Wiped the tears away and got myself on my way and out the door and into traffic with the rest of the world on their way to work.

I’ve been working, between the two jobs, an eighty hour week for about six months now, but it feels like I have been keeping up this pace forever. And it seems unfair. I am pouting today. Resentful of all the time I have to sell to others. Resentful that I can’t even keep enough of my own time to get a proper night’s sleep. Resentful that during my lunch hour, when the rest of the world is eating and making inane conversation with co-workers, I lock my office door and take a nap because I need the recharge before heading into the next nine hours of work.

There are others out here. Others who sell more of their time than I do. Working three jobs. Working two jobs and going to school. And raising families. When do they find time to rest? How do they go on?

And why is our time of so little value that we have to exchange so much of it just to squeak by?