Photo credit to wavemag.ca

So very many books, how-to posts, and articles telling us why we’re so tired and what to do about it:

  • Recession fatigue
  • Return to Work fatigue
  • Lifestyle fatigue
  • Work From Home fatigue
  • Politics fatigue
  • Inflation fatigue
  • Commute fatigue
  • Family fatigue
  • School fatigue
  • Tя☭‪ᴍ‬₽ fatigue
  • Vacation fatigue
  • Budget fatigue
  • COVID fatigue
  • Holiday fatigue
  • News fatigue

Look. I get that psychologists and journalists need attention-grabbing headlines for their journals, websites, magazines, papers, and websites.

But seriously, though. You don’t have to name each possible reason why we maybe might sorta feel some kinda tired.

Just say we’re collectively fucking exhausted. Sheesh!

This is what happens when our culture looks for that silver bullet reason why something is wrong or annoying. We think that makes it easier to fix so that life will suddenly be amazing with zero additional effort.

Sadly, it doesn’t work that way.

It’s absolutely possible you may be family, holiday, COVID, commute, news, and lifestyle fatigued, all at the same time. Reading an article on family fatigue might minimally help, if at all, and you feel even worse because nothing works. Why? Because you’re still fatigued from all those other things.

Back in my day, we used to call this “stress”.

Stress was a catch-all term for whatever caused each person to ruminate, get stuck, feel overwhelmed, underperform, try to control everything to perfection, experience undiagnosable body aches, and so on.

But I guess the SEO Monster must be fed, meaning the word “stress” isn’t all that helpful for finding the exact article you need at the moment. It’s so much easier to put in a question, such as, “why am I so tired over the holidays,” and blam, you get twenty articles with the phrase “holiday fatigue.”

Try a search for “why am I stressed,” and you’ll see exactly what I mean. Bazillions of articles, with a dizzying array of differentiators that sound like they might not apply to you. And you don’t even know what these differences are until you open each article, then voila, you’ve got Search Fatigue.

I think I just made that up. But probably not. And no, I’m not gonna Duck Duck Go “Search Fatigue” to see if it’s out there.

Anywayz, back when it was just called stress, we’d write a paper or an article on how to figure out what your stressor(s) was (were), and/or offer some tips for dealing with most kinds of stress.

Nowadays we can write an article addressing Holiday Fatigue and recommend meditation, taking a good multivitamin, carving out some me-time to recharge, enjoying a power-nap, and occasionally cutting lose with some fun.

Then in a couple weeks we can copy that article and publish it with a different type of fatigue in the headline, proffering the same advice.

It’s a win-win! You, the readers, can more quickly find what you want, and we, the authors, can lazily copy articles, make a few changes, and reuse the heck outta them.

And Duck Duck Go makes money, some of which then goes to Google, because DDG uses G’s search without the tracking.

Oh, and then when you read this new article, you will have long-since forgotten the Holiday Fatigue tome. Why? Maybe you were too busy and/or overwhelmed for it to find a home in your brain’s long-term storage area. Or maybe your brain is highly compartmentalized, and it locked away Holiday Fatigue because that’s over now, and Return to Work Fatigue is a totally different compartment.

Either way, you’ll see the fake cucumber slices from Amazon that have sat unopened and in the way for a few weeks and wonder if they can be used for some me-time.

Luckily they can.

So now you feel better, and all is good and proper.

For the moment. Until another stressor makes you fatigued and ya gotta search for that one, too.