Daily Life Observations From Someone Who Is Just Barely Coping
Alarm clocks, grocery stores, small talk, and the crushing mystery of where all the time goes — this is everyday life, observed with the precision of someone who has been awake for too long.
Daily Life Observations From Someone Who Is Just Barely Coping
These jokes are for you. You know what you’ve been through today. You deserve this.
The Morning Negotiation
My alarm goes off at 7am.
I tell myself I’ll get up at 7:10.
At 7:10 I tell myself I can absolutely get ready in 20 minutes if I skip breakfast and the concept of being a person.
At 7:35 I leave the house wearing the expression of someone who has made irreversible choices and would like everyone to please not talk to them about it.
The Grocery Store Psychological Exam
The grocery store self-checkout machine said “unexpected item in bagging area” because I put my own bag down.
My own bag.
The bag I brought specifically for bagging.
The machine called over an attendant to approve my bag. The attendant looked at my bag. Looked at me. Pressed a button. Left.
No one learned anything. I bought the wrong yogurt because of the stress.
Small Talk: A Horror Story
Coworker: “How was your weekend?”
Me, internally experiencing a four-second cinematic review of everything I did and did not accomplish, and the specific sadness of a Sunday at 6pm: “Good! Yours?”
The To-Do List Paradox
I wrote a to-do list with twelve items on it.
I completed two of them.
I added “make to-do list” to the list and crossed it off.
I now feel like a productive person.
The other ten items have been moved to tomorrow’s list, where they will age like fine wine until they become a different problem entirely.
Time: An Investigation
It is 2:15pm.
Five minutes ago it was 9am.
I have done things. I believe I have done things. The evidence is unclear. The day is mostly gone. I would like to speak to whoever is in charge of the hours because something is wrong with the math and I am raising a formal complaint.
Bedtime
I am tired all day.
The moment I get into bed, my brain opens a folder labeled “Every Mildly Embarrassing Thing You Have Ever Done (2009–Present)” and begins a slideshow.
I lie there, fully awake, reliving a joke I told badly at a party in 2014.
Tomorrow I will be tired again. The folder will be waiting.