I don't know if this even counts as a confession, really. It’s more of a… a persistent, quiet hum of something I can’t quite shake. I think maybe it’s a form of cognitive dissonance, what they call it. Or perhaps just a small, persistent rebellion. I’m 76, you see. Been teaching fitness, personal training, for… decades. Since before it was fashionable. And I’ve always been so… rigid. My clients, they look to me for that discipline. The iron will. The “no sugar, ever” mantra. And I preach it, I really do. With genuine conviction. I design programs that are *grueling*, that push people past what they thought they could do. And they thank me for it. They say I changed their lives. And I believe I have. But then… after those sessions, after I’ve put someone through a particularly brutal circuit, sweat stinging my eyes, my own muscles shaking, I get in my car. And I have this… this little ritual. At the very bottom of my gym bag, under my clean towels and my spare pair of trainers and my perfectly portioned protein bar – a snack bar I’d *never* actually eat myself, mind you – there’s a small, carefully wrapped package. A cellophane-wrapped snack cake. Usually the kind with the white cream filling. The kind I used to eat as a child, when my mother wasn't looking. And I eat it. Every single crumb. In the quiet of my car, parked just out of sight of the gym entrance. The cheap, sugary sweetness blooming on my tongue. Is that… perverse? Is it a symptom of something? I think maybe it’s the quiet rebellion of a life spent telling others, and myself, what we *should* be. My art, my real passion, never paid the bills, you know. Not truly. This did. And I am grateful for it. But sometimes, when I’m chewing that impossibly soft cake, I remember sitting in my tiny studio apartment, years ago, painting until my fingers cramped. And the flavor of that cake, it tastes of… a different path, perhaps. A less disciplined one. A sweeter one. I don't know if that makes sense to anyone else. Sometimes it just feels like the only honest thing I do all day.