There was a time in my life when five o’clock was something to look forward to.

“There was a time in my life when five o’clock was something to look forward to.”

When the clock struck five, it was the beginning of the best part of the day: Quitting time and happy hour, when you could find me meeting up with friends or going out on dates. My only meaningful responsibilities at the time were from my job, so 5 p.m. was when the rest of my life started — the part that felt like it truly belonged to me. 

After five, I could take an evening art class or go to a yoga studio; I could run along the river at sunset or go to a final showing at a local movie theater. I could stay home and watch TV until nightfall, then start a three-hour baking project while blasting Shania Twain in my kitchen. After five, I was free, with 17 blissful hours just waiting for me to decide how I wanted to spend them. 

Sometime in the last decade, my relationship with five o’clock turned decidedly sour. Some of it could be attributed to being in a more complicated stage of my career — one where a true end to the workday rarely came, and almost never at five o’clock. Some of it was just part of what happens as we age and take on more responsibilities in our domestic life, and I definitely had a host of those, including pets, a husband, a house, and eventually a baby, all of whom required care and tending every day.

There’s this phenomenon that happens when infants are learning how to set their circadian rhythm that my parenting books called The Witching Hour. Guess what time that usually started? Yep, like clockwork nearly every day, at around five. 

“The work day was officially over even though my task list seemed somehow bigger than when it started.”

Now when five o’clock came around, I was almost always surprised in the worst way, shocked that the workday was officially over even though my task list seemed somehow bigger than when it started. But I couldn’t do anything about it now, because I needed to switch gears and start thinking about that recurring nightmare of figuring out, yet again, what in the world we were going to have for dinner. 

For nearly five years, I turned into the worst version of myself during these post-work hours. Switching from work to domestic responsibilities was certainly part of the problem — what Arlie Hochschild and Anne Machung called “The Second Shift” in their 1989 book of the same name, when working mothers shoulder the disproportionate amount of unpaid domestic labor after pulling a full eight-hour workday.

“My baby had made it through The Witching Hour phase, and now I was the one inconsolably crying each evening.”

But even after my husband and I did what we could to mitigate that strain, to more evenly divide our responsibilities fairly, to hire babysitters or lean on family to help pick up some hours so we could have time to ourselves, I still found myself fighting tears of frustration and despair nearly every day at 5 p.m. 

My baby had made it through The Witching Hour phase, and now I was the one inconsolably crying each evening.

Something had to change.

The inspiration

Something true about me: I have an extremely low tolerance for my own misery.

It’s one thing to be experiencing episodic bouts of gloominess, anxiety, or anger, but if I discover that I’m somehow maintaining a pattern of distressing emotional states, then I am the first one to start coming up with a plan to change it. And maybe it’s the ADHD, but I have an overly optimistic and inflated sense of my own capacity to outsmart something I don’t like, no matter the mounting evidence that this might not be the case.

“If I discover that I’m somehow maintaining a pattern of distressing emotional states, then I am the first one to start coming up with a plan to change it.”

I tried so many things: We started ordering a meal service delivery so dinner was no longer a variable. My husband took over the bedtime routine for our daughter so I could have that time “free.” I tried going out once a week, and I tried staying in. I tried taking our dog for a long walk at sunset every night. We tried eating as a family at the table, and we tried eating around the TV. We tried eating on the porch, or on a picnic blanket in the backyard. We tried making the evenings fun and spontaneous, and we tried making them low-effort and casual. We tried rigid schedules and strict routines, but we stopped after a few days, because we all hated them.

Sometimes, we had a great night. But whether it happened at five or later, I still found myself surly and weepy most evenings, stomping around the house and slamming cabinets, at a total loss about what was going on. 

I knew things couldn’t continue like this — I was spending the few precious hours my family and I had together every weekday acting like an absolute basketcase. And my bad mood was infectious, poisoning the well for my whole house as they all anticipated or reacted to my daily transformation into Oscar the Grouch. 

“It seemed impossible that I ever once enjoyed the evenings, or that what now seemed like the tiniest blink of time had once felt expansive with possibilities.”

It seemed impossible that I ever once enjoyed the evenings, or that what now seemed like the tiniest blink of time had once felt expansive with possibilities. How could I get that feeling back? 

Then I found a post by Paige Kershaw of the Substack “Open House” with the promising title “How to Make 5pm Feel Like the Start of Your Day.” And finally, finally, I found the inspiration I needed to reframe my toxic relationship with the evenings into something that I could actually enjoy. 

It wasn’t the details in the post itself that sparked my imagination — her exact routine sounds lovely, but isn’t exactly replicable for me, personally. What really resonated with me instead was simply how relaxed she seemed. Instead of another to-do list, her evening makes the process of exercise, cooking, working on a hobby, and then putting yourself to bed sound like four or five hours of actual bliss.

Some of it was the framing: Exercise is a “Golden Hour Walk,” and getting ready for bed is “The Spa Moment.” The hour before bedtime? “Turn Down Service.” It’s a master class in romanticizing the evening — a reminder that I was sorely needing, as I was deep in the habit of demonizing mine instead.

“It’s a master class in romanticizing the evening — a reminder that I was sorely needing, as I was deep in the habit of demonizing mine instead.”

Playing some music, pouring a glass of wine, lighting candles, and generally trying to treat the whole evening as a no-rush treat instead of a schedule we were already behind on was a great start to turning around my relationship with 5 p.m. Which was a huge improvement! I was still having some freakouts in the evenings, but they were fewer and farther between, which I was trying to take as a win. For a few weeks, it seemed like that was the level of improvement we were going to enjoy, and I tried to be grateful.

And then I stumbled onto the key that unlocked the next level, transforming my evenings into something not just bearable but truly essential: I started treating them as the beginning of the next day.

An alternate schedule

My issue, I realized, wasn’t just with the chore list or the seemingly shortened hours, or not having the “right” evening routine — it was the sense that the day was over, and I had failed.

As someone who measures so much of her days by the state of a running to-do list, it’s no wonder each evening loomed over me like this for so long. Because if 5 p.m. was the finish line and I was never getting to the bottom of my tasks, I was running a race each day where I knew I was going to come in dead last. Again. I had to change my mindset, and it occurred to me that instead of simply reframing the activities, maybe I should try shifting how I viewed the schedule itself.

“It occured to me that instead of simply reframing the activities, maybe I should try shifting how I viewed the schedule itself.”

At various points in my working life, I’ve had to adjust my personal clock to an alternate schedule — aka one that deviates from the standard Monday-Friday 9-to-5.

Working nights or weekends meant that I had to reframe how and when I lived the rest of my life, like doing errands and chores on Mondays, dinners and movies on Tuesdays, and starting my week on Wednesday. After the adjustment period, I sometimes really preferred these schedules, because they were just offset enough from the rest of the world to sometimes offer me more freedom and space to do things when everyone else was at the office.

This is sort of what happened when my husband and I decided to spend a week really focusing on our sleep hygiene. Our responsibilities were showing no signs of slowing down, and the day continued to hold its stubborn 24-hour boundary, and we were exhausted. We’d had too many nights of not enough true rest, and we were running ourselves so ragged that even being in bed for the required eight hours wasn’t producing good quality sleep. So we took a week off alcohol and moved our dinner time earlier, and tried leading up to bedtime with an hour of no screens and dim lights. And because sleep was at the center of our minds, it also started to take up the center of our schedule.

“Because sleep was at the center of our minds, it also started to take up the center of our schedule.”

During that week, so many of our habit shifts to support better sleep started in the evening. Waking up in the mornings felt less like the start of the day and more like a continuation of the night before, as we were immediately checking our sleep scores and assessing how we were feeling. The mornings shifted from feeling like a beginning into more of a check-in mid-project, for us to compare notes and discuss if there was anything we thought we needed to adjust to improve our rest.

This changed everything for me. I love a beginning, so suddenly I felt energized by the start of our evening sleep project, ready to try the little shifts we’d discussed and move through the steps of our plan to see if we could make that night’s sleep score better than the night before. Because sleep was the goal and not completing the ever-replenishing to-do list, I was generating a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction no matter what the state of the list was.

When you’re managing a running task list, it makes sense that the finish lines would bleed into different times of the day. Adjusting the start of my day to what used to feel like the end was the pressure release I so desperately needed.

And it probably didn’t hurt that I was getting high-quality sleep, either.

Begin it well

As the yearbook editor during my senior year of high school, I completely missed a major deadline with our publisher that cost the school hundreds of dollars. The yearbook supervisor was also my beloved English teacher, and I will never forget the shame I felt when I had to own up to my mistake and absorb her disappointment.

The following week, she brought me a card with this quote attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it well and serenely, and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.”

“Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it well and serenely, and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is a point every day when we have to put it all down. Depending on where we are in life, the end of the day will be at different times. Five o’clock might mean quitting time, or it might mean clocking in — but these schedules set by the institutions we’re part of are only one aspect of our lives.

I kept that card as a reminder that I was not only going to make mistakes, but I could choose to let them go. I could choose to start again. The manner in which I start again — encumbered with old nonsense, or well and serenely — is up to me.

Stephanie H. Fallon is a Contributing Editor at The Good Trade. She is a writer originally from Houston, Texas and holds an MFA from the Jackson Center of Creative Writing at Hollins University. She lives with her family in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, and she is the author of Finishing Lines, where she writes about her fear of finishing, living a creative life, and (medical) motherhood. Since 2022, she has been reviewing sustainable home and lifestyle brands, fact-checking sustainability claims, and bringing her sharp editorial skills to every product review. Say hi on Instagram or on her website.