a bad night

I did a lot of things yesterday - typed an exam, wrote most of an exam for another class, did a bunch of grading, taught my class, made arrangements for a bunch of stuff. And I have a lot of things on my mind - I take my lab class on a field trip this afternoon (provided it's not storming), I have to make time to grade an exam I collect today, make time to grade the one I give tomorrow, I have to bake cookies for the memorial service of the man from my church who was in hospice. (I think I mentioned him before - he was a member of my department but retired long before I came here, and I think had had a couple of strokes before I met him as well. The goal was to get him home so he could die at home, and that happened, though perhaps sooner than everyone expected)...so there's a lot going on.

I always sleep badly and have somewhat oppressive dreams when there's a lot on my mind. Not really nightmares, per se, but dreams packed with stuff where I wind up waking up almost feeling more tired (well, intellectually so, not physically so) than when I went to bed.

(Actually, being emotionally/intellectually tired is worse, I think, than physical tiredness. Like the sort of physical tiredness that comes from a day out hiking, or a day doing chores or yardwork - you can fix that kind of tiredness easily by sleeping, and actually, sometimes it even feels kind of good to be tired in that way. But the strung-out, anxious, hyper kind of tiredness that comes from having to fit too many things in too little an amount of time - sleeping doesn't necessarily fix that, especially not if you dream-rehearse what you are having to do in the next day).