It’s 2:43 in the morning and the crickets outside are so loud they sound like static, just constant buzzing in the dark, and I’m sitting here on the edge of the mattress with the phone screen burning my eyes. My wife is breathing real heavy next to me—she’s got that whistle in her nose since her surgery—and all I can think about is that silver laptop sitting on the dining room table under a pile of mail and a Sears catalog from last month. It’s been sitting there since May. Or maybe April. I don’t even—I can’t remember the last time I actually touched the lid, because every time I walk past it to get a glass of water or my heart pills, I feel this sharp, hot knot right under my ribs. It’s like being back in third grade and knowing you didn’t do the book report, but I’m fifty-nine years old. I’m almost sixty. I should be thinking about the lawn or the new roof or how much longer the Ford is going to last before the transmission gives out for good. But instead I’m thinking about the file. DISSERTATION_FINAL_DRAFT_V4. That’s what it says on the screen, or it did, the last time I let the battery stay charged. It’s been three months since I clicked on it. Three months of just staring at the icon until my stomach turns over and I have to go sit on the porch and look at the trees until the feeling goes away. I worked thirty years at the mill, then ten at the county office, and I thought this was going to be the thing, you know? The thing people remembered. Dr. Miller. That’s what my advisor calls me in her emails, even though I’m not a doctor yet, I’m just a guy who can’t get past chapter four because I’m scared I don’t have anything worth saying. She’s real nice about it too, which makes it worse. "Just checking in," she says. "Hoping to see some progress by Friday." She’s probably thirty years younger than me. She probably thinks I’m just some old man who can’t figure out the software, but I know the software fine. I just—I mean I don’t even—it doesn’t matter. I saw Bill down at the hardware store yesterday and he asked how the "big project" was going and I lied straight to his face while I was buying some plumbing tape for the sink. Told him it was almost done. Told him I was just "polishing the edges" or some nonsense like that. Everyone in this town knows I’ve been taking these classes online for six years. They think I’m some kind of genius for doing it this late in life, but I’m just a liar. I felt like I was going to throw up right there next to the PVC pipes. I had to leave my cart and just walk out. I didn't even buy the tape. The sink is still leaking into a plastic bucket and every time I hear that *drip-drip-drip* it feels like Dr. Miller’s little cursor blinking on a blank page. Waiting. Just waiting for me to be who I said I was going to be. The thing is, I’m tired. My back hurts when I sit in that wooden chair for more than twenty minutes and the words—all that academic talk about "structural frameworks" and "methodological approaches"—it all feels like a different language. Like a joke I’m not in on. I spent forty years talking like a normal person and now I’m trying to sound like someone I’m not just so I can have a piece of paper that says I did it. For what? My kids don’t care. They’re busy with their own lives in the city. My grandkids don’t even know what a dissertation is. I wanted to leave something behind besides a house with a leaky sink and a pension that barely covers the groceries, but maybe there isn’t anything else. Maybe I’m just a guy who worked at a mill and that’s the end of the story. I got another email tonight at 6:15 PM. I saw the notification pop up while we were eating meatloaf and I almost dropped my fork. "Dear Gary, I haven't heard from you since the spring. Is everything okay?" I haven't opened it. I can't. If I open it, I have to reply, and if I reply, I have to explain why I’ve spent ninety days watching the birds and cleaning the gutters and doing literally anything except opening that file. I even started painting the baseboards in the guest room last week just to feel like I was accomplishing something, but the paint is the wrong shade of white and now I have to redo the whole thing and I just—I mean I don't even—whatever. It's just paint. It's just a file. Sometimes I think about just deleting the whole thing. Just right-click, move to trash, empty trash, and then it's gone. I could tell everyone I finished it but the university lost the records, or that I decided the degree wasn't "aligned with my values" or some other lie. People here would believe me. They’d say "that’s a shame, Gary" and then we’d talk about the weather or the high school football team and life would go back to being quiet. But I’d still know. I’d see that laptop every day and know that the ghost of that file is still in there, hiding behind the screen. It’s like a person died in that computer and I’m the one who buried them. I tried to open it tonight. Around midnight. I sat down, I put my hand on the lid, and I felt that wave of heat hit my throat. My heart started thumping like a trapped bird. I actually had to run to the bathroom because I thought I was going to lose my dinner. I sat on the cold linoleum for twenty minutes just breathing in the smell of the pine cleaner and the damp towels. I’m sixty years old and I’m hiding from a Microsoft Word document like it’s a monster under the bed. It’s pathetic. I know it’s pathetic. I don’t need anyone to tell me that. I’ve lived through layoffs and the '08 crash and my heart surgery three years ago and I wasn't this scared of any of that. What if I open it and I realize it’s all garbage? What if I spend these last few good years I’ve got left chasing a title that doesn't mean anything in a town where people still use wood stoves? I look at the clock and it’s almost 3:00 now and the whistle in my wife’s nose is getting louder and I just—I wish I’d never started. I wish I’d just been happy being the guy from the mill. But I started it and now it’s like this weight around my neck and I’m drowning in six inches of water. I keep thinking about my dad and how he never finished anything. He had half-built birdhouses and half-painted sheds all over the yard when he passed. I used to think he was lazy. Now I think maybe he just couldn't stand the sight of his own mistakes. I’m going to have to send that email eventually. Or Dr. Miller is going to call the house. Or I’m just going to keep sitting here in the dark until the sun comes up and the birds start and I have to pretend to be a functioning person again. I don’t even know what I’m looking for here. I just needed to say it out loud to someone who isn't going to look at me with that pitying expression, like I’m a dog that can’t quite catch the ball anymore. I’m just so tired of being nauseous. I’m just so tired of that laptop staring at me from under the mail. I should probably just go back to sleep but I know the minute I close my eyes I’m going to see that little blue icon. Just sitting there. Blinking. Asking me where I’ve been.