Hitting the Afternoon Wall

What is it about mid afternoon that makes a man want to nod off regardless of how well he slept the night before? I try to get eight hours sleep each night and be at my work station between 7:30 and 8:00 each weekday morning. I always eat breakfast, either before I start or an hour or so later. When lunch time rolls around I usually take 30 minutes and watch the news at noon and have a light meal which is typically a half a sandwich and a bottled water or maybe something from the night before like left over meatballs and spaghetti. The latter is an invitation to an afternoon carb crash but the former should not be. This seems to be an issue more for men than for women.

As sure as the sun glares through the blinds, between 3 and 4  I start to get heavy eyelids. One friend told me I should drink more water. Another suggested I should eat a piece of fresh fruit around 3 o'clock to ward off the day shift sandman. Neither of these worked. The water had its expected results and the fruit seemed to make me more tired.

One day I realized that it might be normal for a man to fall asleep for 30 minutes in the afternoon and it was the perception of women that napping was a product of laziness. That was my motivation for researching the subject. I discovered that Thomas Edison frequently fell asleep while working. My wife said that was why it took him so long to invent anything. I read that power naps increased productivity at the end of the day. My wife said it was an excuse to work late. I decided to try giving in to my urge to nod out at my desk for 30 minutes to see for myself how I would fare.  How did my wife know, from the other room, that I fell asleep?
 The door burst open and she asked abruptly, "Your not sleeping are you?"
Not anymore.

Lightly Deprived

Seasonal Affective Disorder (SADs) is caused by sunlight deprivation. Commonly called cabin fever, it is an actual medical condition. I never experienced it before I became a freelance writer. I don’t live in a cabin and my body temperature in the winter is no higher than any other time, but I do start feeling a little bored and lethargic. As I have mentioned in previous post’s, I work in the corner of a room that has two standard size windows. These windows face south and have blinds. When the sun does shine, at a low winters angle, I am forced to close the blinds due to glare and to eliminate the striped pattern across my keyboard. Lately I have moved into the living room to work where there is a slider that faces north to the parking area of my condo complex. I have gotten familiar with the seagull breakfast club that meets at 6:30 every morning on the roof of the building across the way. Today they must be discussing their Vatican star that brought them into the spotlight by perching on the chimney just prior to the white smoke appearing. Then there is the thin, spry woman who walks in any weather and passes by at precisely 7:15 every morning.  She probably has avoided her cabin fever. I give her credit. Meanwhile, as I sit in the same place all day, I feel as if I am stretching toward the window and becoming thin and leggy like a house plant with inadequate exposure. Pretty soon my neck will no longer support my head and my wife will need to stake me up in my chair with a broom and bungee cord. 

It seems like this year we have only had a about a weeks worth of sunny days since January. Add to that the early season trauma caused by Sandy, and the subsequent Nor'easter  and you have a recipe for the blues. In the summer, in New Jersey, the term blues means a fishing trip but this season it means melancholia.  A fishing trip sounds good but it must wait at least another month. Football has ended for the season so my weekends are spent indoors in stores with my wife. There are no flea markets or yard sales so even if stubborn Mr. Sun should show up there is no place to enjoy him. In the Northeast sunny also means a cold, blustery, northwesterly flow of air.  

St Patrick's Day is being celebrated by the parade in New York on Saturday the 16^th which is one day early. It is going to be cold and damp as it usually is. Fortunately the winter begins to wane soon. The days are getting longer. I bought some seeds for peas and radishes and the sowing instructions say I can plant them as soon as I can work the soil. That will at least get me into the sun for a couple of hours. That is contingent on Mr. Sun showing up for work instead of  moonlighting in those Jimmy Dean commercials.