Member-only story
Standing at the Fridge Again at 11:40…….
Tuesday, 11:40 p.m., and there I am in the kitchen with the peanut butter open and a spoon I swear I didn't plan on picking up. Creamy, for the record. My sister gets the crunchy one. I wasn't hungry. Dinner had been at seven, rice and chicken, plus a bag of frozen broccoli I'd actually finished. My sister caught me at it once, said "oh, you too?", and grabbed a second spoon. We finished about a third of the jar standing up.
Why the tired brain says yes
By ten at night I've made a few hundred tiny decisions. Which email to answer first, what to wear on Thursday, whether the group chat needs a reply or can wait until morning. The part of me that normally says "maybe skip it" has usually gone home by then.
A coworker told me once that she counted her meetings and could guess whether she'd raid the pantry that night. Six meetings, cereal. Eight, cereal plus whatever bread was around. I laughed at her. Then I tracked my own bad days for a couple of weeks and she was mostly right, which annoyed me.
There's a name for this, decision fatigue, though I've only read about it secondhand and I think the research got shakier a few years back, so I wouldn't bet money on the exact mechanism. I'd bet on the pattern, though. Long day, empty brain. The worst nights tended to follow days when I'd…
