I don’t know if this counts, really, as a confession. It feels more like… a memory I keep turning over, a stone in my pocket that's always there. I think about it sometimes, late at night, when the house is quiet and my hands are too stiff to draw. I was a social worker, for a time, a very long time ago. Before I started painting full-time. Before I understood that some things just… ARE, and you can’t make them different, no matter how hard you try. There was this promotion, you see. It was a step up, meant more responsibility, a different kind of caseload. The director, a very sharp woman, had mentioned my name. "Excellent potential, highly dedicated," she’d said, and I remember feeling a warmth, a little bloom, in my chest. It felt important, like I was finally getting somewhere. I’d always had this almost… maladaptive need, I think, to prove my worth. To show them I wasn't just some flaky art-school girl. My parents had always worried, you know, about the financial instability of "the arts." So, when the opportunity arose, I volunteered for three extra committees. Three. I remember sitting there, in the meeting, raising my hand for each one, feeling this strange mix of exhilaration and dread. There was the community outreach committee, working with the homeless population, which was intensely demanding. And the grant-writing committee, all those numbers and deadlines. And then the children’s advocacy group, where the stories just… they just stick to you, like burrs. I genuinely thought, at the time, that it would show my commitment. My dedication. That it would be the tipping point. "She goes above and beyond," I imagined them saying. The exhaustion, though. Oh, the exhaustion was like nothing I'd ever felt. It was a bone-deep weariness that settled in my very cells. I’d come home and just… stare at the wall, too tired to even make dinner. My primary case reports, the ones that were actually my job, started to pile up. I’d sit at my desk, looking at the folders, feeling this incredible mental block. It was almost like a dissociative state, I think, where my brain just refused to engage. I’d tell myself, "Just open one. Just read the first page." But I couldn't. My mind was just… oatmeal. And the irony of it all, of course, was that the very thing I was doing to get ahead, to prove myself, was making me incompetent at the thing I was ALREADY supposed to be doing. It was a kind of self-sabotage, I suppose, born of a very misplaced ambition. I didn't get the promotion. Of course I didn't. The director called me into her office, and she was very kind, very professional. She said something about "needing someone who could consistently manage their core responsibilities." And I just… nodded. I knew, really. I KNEW. I was too tired to even feel the sting of it properly. It was a relief, in a way, to just… stop. To finally just let myself collapse. I left that job not long after, and eventually, found my way back to painting. Sometimes, when I’m struggling to pay the bills now, I think about that promotion, that other life, and wonder if I’d made a mistake. But then I look at my hands, covered in paint, and I think maybe… maybe not. It’s a very quiet sadness, these days. A gentle regret.