As someone who frequently works long hours at a job that takes either absolutely no focus or every ounce of attention I can muster, one of the most difficult problems that invades the later portion of my day is hunger. I’ve dealt with it before, usually in much more difficult situations overall, so this isn’t a problem in the way that my insomnia is a problem. It’s more of a problem in the way that my penchant for flipping between the same few websites when I get distracted is a problem. It tends to mostly impact my mental health and my ability to stay focused on whatever I’m doing, which in turn impacts how frequently I wind up flipping between websites or taking a break to do a little writing. It’s ignorable if I have the spoons to put into the effort, but when I’m working a bunch of ten-hour days in a row (or eleven-hour days, like this week as I cope with an unexpected confluence of schedule disruptions), I’m usually better off saving my spoons for something that isn’t a problem I can solve with a little foresight and planning. For most of this past year, that has looked like bringing an apple and an extra banana to work every day, so that I’ve got a snack when I start to get hungry in the mid-afternoon (three hours after I’ve eaten lunch) and then a second snack, if needed, for when I start to feel hungry in the late afternoon or early evening.

Recently, though, as I’ve struggled to accommodate the stresses following my move and my increase in hours worked (going from 45-47.5 to 50 is a significant change when you’ve got a max of ten useful hours in you before you really need to struggle for focus), my shopping day has changed frequently. As a result, it’s been difficult to dependably get fruit that will still be good a week later. I had a really good time worked out before, right after they started restocking, but I’ve been going later at night and apparently more people go shopping at that time of the night than the hour or two earlier that I used to go. As a result, I’ve had to look elsewhere for snacks, which turned out to be a bit fortuitious given how late I’ve been working the last couple weeks (I’ve been stressed out and had a period of getting in to work later than I’d like). I’ve needed more substantial snacks since the time I eat dinner is later than it used to be and just shifting the rest of my meals around to fit the time I’m working only exacerbated my morning delay problems the last time I tried it. So, instead of bringing in bags of chips or larger amounts of food, I decided to buy a hot air popcorn popper for my team’s break room, a large bag of popcorn kernels, and a small selection of flavored popcorn salts.

Ostensibly, it was my alternative to the sweets and pastries that people usually brought for their birthdays or just because they wanted a sweet companion for their morning coffee time. A lot of the team was mildly complaining about how unhealthy all of these treats were and how some of them proved to be too strong of a temptation away from their various diets, so I figured I’d take that general feeling and run with it. Since I had a birthday recently, I used that as an excuse to bring the popcorn popper in and made the team popcorn, providing an easy alternative to the mildly maligned sweets. Since then, I’m the only one who has used it. I’m not terribly surprised that my coworkers didn’t actually want to move away from sugary treats and I think some of them might be a little intimidated by the process of making the popcorn (I learned I’m the only one on the team who doesn’t just eat microwave popcorn, much less uses an air fryer instead of a pan and oil on the stove). Still, I’ve used it pretty much every day I’ve been in the office, making a quick treat for myself to help hold off the hunger pangs when I’m staying in the office until eight or later. It’s a good snack that’s not too filling but is just filling enough that I won’t feel hungry for a few more hours. Probably more healthy than all the apples and bananas I used to eat (though I still get my daily fruit through breakfast), since it’s just plain popcorn and a bit of zero calorie flavored salt. I don’t like any of the heavier stuff, the sweet or cheese-based options, so it’s about as healthy a snack as one can eat other than raw vegetables. Which, historically, have run into the same goes-bad-too-fast problem that fruit did, so that wasn’t really a viable option. Plus, I usually still feel hungry after a vegetable snack unless its a sizable one.

Another upside I’ve found to my now daily popcorn ritual is that it serves as a great mental break. I usually make the popcorn around five or six in the evening, after my coworkers have all gone home for the day. This is also when I tend to shift the work I’m doing, moving from what I can get done around my various coworkers to what I couldn’t do until I had space. We’re currently under a lot of time pressure for a few different projects and I’ve found everything gets done a bit faster if I’ve got a few hours when I’m not tripping over my coworkers and they have a few hours when they’re not tripping over me. As a result, I’m usually shifting gears as the afternoon changes into evening and taking a break to make popcorn and then clean the air-popper serves as a nice, meditative process as I moved from the detail-oriented computer work I’ve been doing to the more broad but usually more singularly-focused lab work I need to get done. It’s really helped me get out of the mental fog that tends to gather around me after an entire afternoon of documentation work and test planning, so I think I might keep it up even if I stop working as late as I have been and don’t need so substantial a snack. I can always make less popcorn. I’m far form the minimum required amount, still, and it’s not like I’d need to do any careful measuring or make any changes to my routine. It will just take less time to pop. That’s the best part about an air popper. You just turn it on and it takes care of everything. Plus, there’s no oily, greasy mess to clean up afterwards. Just popcorn kernel shards to wipe away. It’s truly the best way to eat popcorn.