I gotta present this design, this big residential tower, to the senior board next week and honestly, I just feel… flat. Like I’m watching someone else’s life from behind a sheet of bulletproof glass. This is my first solo gig, you know? The whole damn thing, from the foundation up, my name’s on it. I’ve been over every single CAD drawing, every stress calculation, until my eyes feel like they’re full of sand. I’m talking late nights, take-out containers piling up like little plastic monuments to my fear. And it’s not even the big stuff I’m scared of. It’s that one tiny, microscopic flaw. The one I missed because my kid had a fever that night, or I was trying to figure out how to stretch a paycheck to cover a busted water heater. The kind of fuck-up that doesn’t just get you yelled at, but gets you blackballed. My brain keeps replaying this one detail, this one connection point in the façade system, where I had to make a call because the fabricator was pushing back on lead times. It felt right at the time, solid. But now? Now it feels like a loose thread on a cheap sweater, ready to unravel the whole damn thing. And it’s not even about passion for the work, not really. It’s about not going back to picking up extra shifts, not having to tell my son we can’t afford that stupid Lego set he wants. It’s about keeping this little bit of stable ground under my feet. Losing this, it’s not just a professional setback, it’s… it’s a whole domino effect for everything. I keep picturing old Mr. Henderson, the guy who mentored me back when I started, staring at my plans, squinting through his thick glasses. He’d find it. He’d find that tiny little miscalculation, that barely perceptible weakness. And he wouldn’t even yell, he’d just look at me with this quiet disappointment, like I’d wasted all the effort he put into me. And that look, man, that look would cut deeper than any cussing out. So I just keep staring at the screen, running the numbers again, over and over, until the lines blur and all I can see is the potential for everything to just… fall down.