Pissy Hour
Is there a time of day that’s “touchy” for you, when you’re prone to getting in a pissy mood if something annoying enough goes wrong?
It’s always been the evening for me. But now that I’m polyphasic, it’s specifically the hour or two after my evening nap; and one of the annoying-enough things that can go wrong for me is to sleep badly. Unfortunately, the evening nap is the toughest one to get right…it gets moved and interrupted the most frequently, and it gets taken in bed, which is, oddly, an incredibly tough place for me to get a good nap. (My core-sleep, the 3 or 4.5 hour “night’s” sleep, goes off fine in bed. But short naps don’t, for some reason.)
I wonder what contributes to Pissy Hour? It’d be awesome to figure out that some diet or behavioral thing was a major cause. Getting a bit hot-collared can be fun occasionally, but “while trying to relax”…not my favorite.
(Crap, I hope it isn’t the trying to relax that’s the problem! That would be my luck…)
3 comments
Since you’re only eating 12 food items a day, you could easily start logging when you eat. When I graze without eating entire meals, it’s easy for me to leave large gaps of time without food by accident. Anyway, with that data you can plot your dots per hour throughout the day and determine areas of greater or lesser eating.
I imagine if you’re not eating meals, this line should be relatively flat. You may even try molding it to reflect the rhythm of your sleep schedule.
Whatever is going on in your mind before “pissy hour” or before the evening nap is likely the primary culprit. Pay attention to what you’re worrying about or trying to solve before your nap. You might have to do something to get your mind off of it before your nap to make the rest of your evening more pleasant. An activity like sudoku or a puzzle of some sort might be good at centering your focus on something else.
Interesting point, Brice — Thanks!
Snailian, that’s so obvious I suppose I ought to be ashamed that I didn’t think of it, but because I didn’t, thank you very much for bringing it up! Evenings are often difficult for me mentally — work is tough and often exhausting — and maybe that does, in fact, contribute to pissy hour. I’ll keep an eye on it. Thanks!
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