tl;dr – if I’m so tired I can’t even get simple things done, I should read, because the priority is to push my own ineffectual thoughts off the mental stage.
I woke up and my brain didn’t work. I articulated how to do stupid cleaning when I can’t work off a todo list. But I was even stupider than that. I found myself staring at my screaming baby, totally out of ideas as to what to do. When she wasn’t screaming I tried to do simple chores and couldn’t do those either.
What now? It seemed to me that whenever I was this non-functioning I struggled to derive anew the appropriate course of action, and once I derived it I should write it down. So here’s my conclusion:
I should read. My head is filled with my own thoughts which are no good and go nowhere. I can eat, medicate, sleep my way out, but not think or write myself out.
My own thoughts (“at some point I should… the real problem is that I need to… the underlying principle is…”) are actively harmful and I need to replace them with someone else’s thoughts. It almost doesn’t matter what, as long as it’s interesting enough to keep on.
It’s difficult to do this on an ultra-stupid day if you have to pick a book. And once you pick it you might be unable to read it, because of your deficiencies. As I jot this down, I’m lucky enough to have a nonfiction book I started a week ago and fell in love with while I had more energy and attention. I couldn’t read it today if I were coming to it cold.
So, starting a book when I had more brainpower was an investment that is paying off today.
If I were starting anew I would go for something immediately addictive. Stephen King and Diana Wynne Jones both have this quality. If you want recs: King’s The Stand (doorstopper but little of it boring moment-to-moment) or Misery (his best work structurally). Diana Wynne Jones is a children’s book author but all of it is adult-enjoyable – Deep Secret (centaur and wizard succession crises at an SFF con), Dark Lord of Derkholm (rebelling citizens of a world that’s used as Disneyland for a more powerful universe), or Cart and Cwidder (the first book in the excellent and unique Dalemark series) are my suggested entry points.
Oh yeah, what about my baby? I’m not so out of it I can’t run through the feed-diaper-nap-jiggle checklist. Jiggling her when she’s screaming is unpleasant, but so is sitting around trying to figure out how to utilize the quiet time she’s giving me. I can read (badly) either way. When she’s older and needs more sapience from me… I guess I’ll figure it out then.
I walk away often for 5-10 minute stretches. It’s interesting – when my spouse reaches his Brain Turns Off From Screaming point he jiggles her on the bouncer with his foot while vegetating. When my Brain Turns Off From Screaming, it feels better to set a 7 minute timer and recharge in a room at the opposite end of the house, returning in a state where I can hold her and talk to her.
My intuition is that “physically there but not mentally” is only a little better than “not in the room at all”, but I don’t believe this strongly. (Certainly not enough to convince him to switch to my approach.) So on days like this I’m very in and out for her – stepping away often for short breaks, but talkative and touchy when I’m back.