Twenty past three

It's twenty past three on a Wednesday and you're at your desk. The morning went fine. Now there's a stretch of something that isn't quite a task, and something in your chest has gone slightly slack, and your hand is in the biscuit drawer before you've decided anything. You eat one at the desk and it's fine. The slack thing is still there.

At half past five you're in the queue at the post office, and the queue is not moving, and the phone is in your hand and you're looking at something you've already seen today. On the way home you think about the evening, and the first half hour of the evening is the flat part, the part before dinner where nothing is happening, and the glass of wine is poured for that half hour and not for dinner. On Sunday afternoon a friend cancels, and the afternoon opens up in front of you like a field, and by four there's a jacket in a basket on a website and you're looking at the delivery options.

This is an invented day, but I'd be surprised if you didn't recognise most of it. The thing to notice is that it's one habit and not four. Biscuit, phone, wine, jacket. Different rooms, different hours, different items. The same move. A feeling arrives, and the hand goes towards something, and the feeling is covered for a while, and then it's back, sometimes with a second feeling on top of it about the biscuit or the jacket.

You'd probably say the remedy works. It does seem to. The flatness at twenty past three is different after the biscuit, and the queue is more bearable with the phone, and the flat half hour with the wine isn't flat. What I'd like you to consider is whether it was the remedy that changed the feeling, or whether the feeling was changing anyway and the remedy was standing next to it when it did.

Some words. I'll call the first sign of discomfort the flicker. It's the moment the chest goes slack or the jaw sets, before you've named anything. I'll call the feeling itself the discomfort, or by its plain name, bored, flat, awkward, tense, sad, restless, lonely, when the name is clear. Whatever you reach for I'll call the remedy, and the four this book is mostly about are food, drink, a screen and a purchase, though the list is longer. The way a feeling rises, peaks and falls I'll call the wave, and staying with a wave without feeding it or fighting it I'll call riding it. The remedy's claim to have ended a feeling that was ending anyway is the alibi. And what follows the remedy, the small verdict on yourself, I'll call the second feeling.

Before you go on, try one thing. Tomorrow, each time your hand goes towards a remedy, write down the feeling it was going from. One word. If you can, score it out of ten for how bad it was, ten being the worst thing you've felt this year. Don't change anything. Just write. Most people who do this find two things. The list is longer than they expected, and the scores are lower. Twos and threes, mostly. That's what the rest of the book is about.