you ever just sit on your floor at 3am staring at a stack of neon green flyers that you spent forty bucks of your own grocery money to print and feel like you might actually vomit. like your body is physically rejecting the idea of tomorrow. it’s that specific kind of dread where you can feel your pulse in your ears and you’re pretty sure everyone in a five mile radius can hear your heart being a fucking coward. you know that feeling when you’ve built this whole persona of being the person who gets shit done and then you realize you’re just a 31 year old grad student who can’t even remember to water a cactus but somehow you’re supposed to save a whole neighborhood. i’m sitting here looking at these spreadsheets for the park cleanup and the mural project and it’s just words. it’s just symbols. but if nobody shows up at 9am it becomes a fucking autopsy of my entire personality. you ever look at your life milestones and realize you’re just three kids in a trench coat trying to pass as a functional adult. all my friends from undergrad are buying houses and getting promoted and here i am trying to convince a bunch of strangers to pick up trash because i have this pathological need to feel useful. it’s like i’m trying to manufacture some kind of leadership aura to distract from the fact that my thesis is six months behind and i’m eating dry cereal for dinner every night. the community center smells like lemon floor wax and disappointment. i was there earlier setting up chairs—thirty chairs—and the sound of them scraping against the linoleum was the most depressing thing i’ve ever heard. i kept looking at the clock and thinking about the probability of a zero-sum outcome. like what if i’m just shouting into a void and the void is just looking back and laughing because i used the wrong font on the posters. i’ve got this hyper-fixation on the logistics because if i don’t think about the logistics i have to think about the fact that i’m probably just a massive ego-maniac who thinks he can fix things he doesn't even understand. sometimes you just feel like you’re suffering from a total collapse of self-efficacy and there’s no clinical term for how much it sucks to realize you might be the common denominator in all your failures. i’ve been reading all this literature on collective action and social capital for my seminars and it’s all so neat and organized on paper but in reality it’s just me sweating through my shirt in a drafty basement hoping people don’t hate me. it’s like this weird psychological projection where i think if i can revitalize a fucking playground then maybe i won’t feel like a wasted potential case study. i remember talking to the old lady who lives next to the lot—mrs. halloway—and she looked at me with these watery eyes and said it’s nice to see someone finally care and i just wanted to scream DON’T TRUST ME I AM LITERALLY GOOGLE TRANSLATING MY WAY THROUGH LIFE. i’m so scared of seeing that look change when she’s the only one who shows up. you know that feeling when you’ve over-leveraged your emotional credit and the bill is coming due tomorrow morning at dawn. it’s not even about the park anymore it’s about the crushing weight of proving that i’m not just a performative dipshit who likes the idea of helping more than the actual work. and the worst part is the humor right. you make a joke about how you’re going to be the only one there with a rake and a sad sandwich and everyone laughs because they think you’re being humble but inside you’re actually dying. you’re literally mourning the version of yourself that was supposed to be a success by now. i’m 31 and i’m worried about whether or not people like my vision for a community garden because i have absolutely nothing else to show for the last decade. it’s pathetic. it’s actually fucking hilarious if you look at it from a distance. the "community leader" is currently crying over a staple gun. i keep thinking about this concept of the locus of control and how mine is basically orbiting a different planet right now. you ever feel like your brain is just a browser with fifty tabs open and all of them are playing a different song at full volume. i’m trying to stay focused on the "revitalization" but i keep drifting back to that time in third grade when i dropped the tray in the cafeteria and everyone clapped. that’s what tomorrow feels like. it feels like i’m walking into a giant cafeteria with a tray full of hopes and everyone is just waiting for the sound of shattering plastic. i even told my professor about the project and he gave me this look—you know the one—the "that’s very ambitious for someone in your position" look. it’s the academic version of "bless your heart." it makes you want to crawl into a hole and stay there until you’re fifty. but instead i just smiled and used words like "grassroots mobilization" and "urban infrastructure" like i knew what the fuck i was talking about. i’m a goddamn con artist. i’m conning myself into believing i have any agency at all. the sun is going to come up in a few hours and i’ll have to put on my "i’m a leader" face and my "everything is fine" jacket and stand on that corner. and if it’s just me and the wind and some empty potato chip bags blowing around... what does that make me. it’s not just a failed project it’s a verdict. you ever feel like life is just a series of trials and you’re currently waiting for the jury to come back and tell you that you’re a fraud. that’s the heavy part. it’s the quiet. the way the air feels right before you find out for sure that you aren't who you thought you were. i’m just going to keep sitting here on this floor and staring at these green flyers until the ink starts to look like blurry little monsters. maybe if i don’t sleep i can stop tomorrow from happening.