The Nap That Actually Works, and the One That Wrecks Your Evening
There is a version of an afternoon nap that leaves you clearer than you were before, and a version that leaves you groggy and useless until dinner. The difference is not luck.
What Ninety Degrees Does to the Inside of My Body
Heat doesn't tire me out the way a long day tires me out. It empties me from somewhere lower down, somewhere behind the ribs, and I've stopped pretending I can push through it.
Read this hour
I stopped trying to fix the tired part
For a long time I treated the flat hours as a problem to be solved, which mostly meant drinking something and feeling worse an hour later. Then I started writing down what those hours actually felt like. Cold hands. The particular heaviness behind the eyes that is different from sleepiness. The way a room I like can stop being a room I like at four o'clock.
None of that is advice. It is just description, which turns out to be more useful than I expected, because once you can name the shape of a low hour you stop being ambushed by it.
