willpower

I haven't posted all week because I've been a bit of a mess, frankly. A job for which I applied hasn't gotten back to me, and I thought (with my experience and with the way that the interview went) that I'd be a shoo-in for it. I don't know if that's the reason, but I do know that I've been exceptionally cranky recently:

• We had new cabinets, and a new countertop and sink, put into the kitchen. This meant that we were without a kitchen sink or dishwasher for the past two weeks or so (they were just restored yesterday). I've been washing dishes in the bathtub, and buying coffee every day, and we've been subsisting on food from the in-laws, and on stuff that The Excellent Wife put in the freezer prior to the beginning of the job, or that she's made since. I have not been graceful about making the adjustment;
• I've been exceptionally impatient with people with whom I disagree politically. I'm pretty far on the left wing, so there are a lot of people with whom I disagree. I hope I haven't upset anyone I care about (and I'm sorry if I have).
• I've been resisting making a frivolous purchase (I've been a bit short of waste-able cash - which means, not that I've been going into debt, or even that I've been saving at a lower rate than I expect, but that my financial "cushion" is a bit smaller than I would like). And I can tell, the effort is tiring.
• It's also a tiring effort not to eat junk. I haven't been doing it (much), but I've been actively resisting it.

I've been reading Baumeister and Tierney's Willpower, and they point out something that the 12-Step programs have been saying for a long time: Willpower is like a muscle - you can tire it out, but through repeated use, you can strengthen it. There are particular brain regions that are active when a person uses willpower, and this effort of will uses glucose, so that when you're hungry, tired, or emotionally stressed, you have less resistance to temptation - and when you resist temptation, you have less energy to do other stuff.
I can see that my disappointment, and my (smaller, but still a factor) stress over the uproar in the kitchen, has been coming out in other little ways.
It looks like the weather and scheduling will allow me to ride both days this weekend. I can really use it. And I hope I can get back to a more frequent posting regimen, without upsettin' the few people with whom I'm still on speaking terms - especially TEW.