Thanks for doing the experiment and letting us know about it.

If you're attempting to use the technique I'm describing, remember to actively label all the mental activity that occurs to you. If the majority of the mental activity you can see is repetitive thoughts and reactions to them, the majority of your meditation experience should be the generation of a stream of labels related to them: "thinking, remembering, aggravated, in-breath, thinking, annoyance, hearing, thinking, shocked, out-breath, thinking, frustrated...". In some ways this is much more important than just trying to follow your breath.