The Inner Oscar the Grouch Ruins Dinner

I struggle with grouchiness. There. I said it. Now go away.

That’s pretty much the extent of the grouchiness - just a desire to be left alone, don’t want to talk, I’m short with my words, and very cold to be around. If I’m grouchy by dinner time, I’ll most certainly ruin dinner because doing anything is a chore and I just want to do nothing. So I’ll rush the meal and it usually turns out not great. Edible. Substandard. And bad food that I just spent time preparing turns out to be a great meal for the grouch. After dinner, I’m left more grouchy with a bad taste in my mouth.

Sometimes I can catch “inner Oscar”, as my wife calls it, before it gets out of hand. Sometimes it gets a hold of me and consumes me for a period until I ride it out and get over it. I always get over it. It’s those times that I can’t head it off before it gets bad that I can’t figure out. It’s a stupid feeling, too, being grouchy. What’s the evolutionary reason for it? Once it starts, most everything seems to make it worse. It’s asinine. Anger kind of make sense and, while it’s somewhat similar to grouchy, there’s a certain focus and drive and energy that comes with anger than can be used for something. Grouchy? It just makes me dumb.

Usually something work related will trigger it and, because I’m stupid and stubborn at times, I’ll pretend I can keep working on the thing that triggered it and the grouch will grow. If I take a break and do something different to clear my head, that seems to help. What a simple sounding solution that I can’t seem to follow consistently. Frustrating.