I have 300-plus friends on Facebook from as early on in my life as the second grade through adulthood. My network is no different than anyone else's -- a potpourri of flashbacks, a virtual This is Your Life, one humongous introspective gossip session gone viral. I am a thirty-something Gen-Xer, who like others of my generation, recently stumbled onto Facebook and now can't imagine life without such in-your-face networking.

And while it's been years since I've been in touch with many of my Facebook friends, I recently noticed we all have something in common. We are totally and completely sleep deprived. Either we are woken up several times a night by children, working incredibly stressful jobs, worried about losing incredibly stressful jobs, fretting about aging parents or our own suspicious health issues, or we are chronic insomniacs. From "Status Updates," corresponding "Comments," lengthier "Notes" -- it's obvious that none of us are well rested. We get up too early and go to bed way too late. We can't complete intelligent conversations, frequently lose our keys, forget to pay bills on time, and don't have the energy to do laundry. Our languor is legendary, our virtual exhaustion an epidemic of astronomical proportions. Because we are so, so tired, we spend a lot of our time on Facebook talking about caffeine. I may not remember where you live or if you have children or what you do for a living, but chances are, even if I haven't seen you in a decade, I know from Facebook whether you consider yourself a coffee or tea drinker. Or if you prefer your cup-of-Joe from Starbucks rather than Dunkin' Donuts. Or whether you don't give a damn as long as it's got caffeine in it.

For those of us who are reconnecting years after we lost touch, Facebook is our virtual neighborhood coffee shop -- the place where we share and analyze our drug of choice. We "see" one bleary-eyed person and slunk over to join them, ceramic mug in hand. The exchange begins innocently enough -- How is the job? How is the family? But then we deteriorate quickly into comparing coffee makers, fretting over newly shut down Starbucks stores, and debates over loose tea verses tea bags. The theme, as always, is that we are all so damn tired.

Sometimes, I have to wonder whether there's a correlation between Facebookers and wakefulness. Are us thirty-somethings on Facebook forfeiting sleep for the opportunity to "poke" or "tag" or write on someone's "wall"? Is Facebook partially to blame for our paucity of REM? Has it become yet another contributor to our inability to fall asleep and our unhealthy obsession with caffeine? Is our downward spiral into sleeplessness the basis for some sort of status update competition?

Anjali is tired. (5 comments, all from friends agreeing that they are also tired.)

Anjali was woken up 3 times last night. (4 comments, all from friends mentioning that they were woken up even more than Anjali was.)

Anjali is waiting for caffeine to kick in. (7 comments, all from friends waiting for the same jump start to their own nervous systems.)
It seems that those of us who go through life in a perpetual zombie-like state, are, in fact, encouraging each other's wakefulness on Facebook. We have established an unhealthy co-dependence; a somnolent rivalry. We are in a race of exhaustion, where the winner is the person who falls asleep on top of their laptop despite having downed two shots of espresso. A few mornings ago, after a particularly wakeful night, I gave up and headed downstairs to the kitchen at 4:45 am. When my tea was ready, I covered my shoulders with a blanket and sat down at the computer to log onto Facebook. Seconds later, a friend messaged me. "Up a little early, aren't we?" she wrote. I could almost hear the sarcasm in her words. "Looooong story," I typed one-handed while sipping. "Hope this tea helps." "I'm on my 2nd cup of joe already," she wrote. "I was thrown up on all night." "My oldest had nightmares about fire." There was a long pause before my friend wrote again. "So," she said. "Besides being tired, what's on tap for you today?"