A new tiredness has dropped. According to the market researchers Mintel, 2023 is the year of “hyperfatigue” – which seems to describe a state of continual physical, emotional and mental exhaustion. It’s nice of them to enrich our weariness one-upmanship with this concept, even if it sounds like something a French teenager would have said in the 90s; my computer even keeps trying to add an accent.
But they aren’t wrong: tiredness – possibly, yes, hyperfatigue – is the malaise of our age. Everywhere is too light and too loud to sleep properly, and our animal brains are overwhelmed by rolling news of hundreds of global atrocities and dangers, TikTok, deepfakes and monitoring 48 WhatsApp groups. In a recent survey, 35% of people said they were too tired to make healthy changes to their diet and activity levels, suggesting many are in a vicious circle of fatigue-induced self-sabotage, leading to more fatigue. We’re too tired to tackle our tiredness, basically.
But surely there must be better ways to describe what we’re experiencing? One word shouldn’t cover everything from a 50-mile bike ride, to five teething night feeds, to soul-crushing world-weariness. “Tired” is doing too much heavy lifting: used as a proxy for a whole paint chart of feelings, it’s going to tire itself out. We need 50 words for tired, expressing specific granular variations, and we need the geniuses who come up with nail varnish colour names to invent them, not market researchers: give me expressive; give me apposite. Here are some of the types of tiredness I want words for – and possibly colour-coded lanyards, which could spare us all a lot of strife.
Heavy tired: Your face is sagging off your skull; your mouth has become stuck slightly open and you’re not strong enough to close it again, allowing a thin line of drool to escape intermittently. Your head is a cannonball, your eyelids little sandbags from which sand dribbles, foreshadowing your death. Your teeth are lead and even your hair feels heavy.
Anxious tired: The only executive function still available to you is catastrophising: you’re getting fired; terrible things have befallen your loved ones; your partner is breaking up with you. Your fingers tingle with dread opening every email, even one from a deodorant brand saying they miss you, so here’s a 10% discount with code PIT10.
Existentially tired: You’re only saying “I am so tired” because the English language doesn’t give you adequate ways to express your profound existential malaise. Jean-Paul Sartre would understand.
Skinned-alive tired: It feels as if someone has taken a kitchen scourer to every inch of you, then kicked you downstairs. Everything is an assault: a ringing phone, ordering coffee, the printer (admittedly printers are an assault even after eight hours of dreamless sleep). Your own breathing is unbearable. You’d cry, but tears would feel too awful on your raw, bloodshot eyeballs.
Hungry tired: Ideally, someone would make you a pillow, possibly a whole duvet, of carbs, but you’re forced to make do with anything you can cram into the toaster. Later you find yourself impatiently microwaving a kilo bag of oven chips and eating them still half frozen. Dessert is everything, including a box of coconut macaroons – best before: Jan 2012 – to which you may be allergic (you no longer care).
Stupid tired: Your brain has been replaced with a single dried pea. Whee, listen to it roll!
Angry tired: If your day had a soundtrack, it would be screaming Finnish death metal. You give off an aura of such unhinged rage that everyone tiptoes around you like you’re unexploded second world war ordnance. That just makes you angrier.
Twin Peaks tired: Every place, person and task you encounter feels like a fairground ride designed by David Lynch. Someone asks you a simple question, but what comes out of your mouth sounds like Edward Lear, recited from inside a bowl of jelly. Everything is absurd: these are what, fingers? A “fork”? “Microsoft Excel”? Nope, meaningless.
Resignation tired: If AI could take your job, you’d greet it with sobbing gratitude and helpful handover notes. That was today’s version here, but unfortunately AI didn’t show up, so you’re stuck with me.
Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist