I’m staring at a travel brochure for a place with palm trees. It’s raining outside, obviously. Always raining. The kind of grey that feels less like weather and more like a permanent atmospheric condition designed to induce low-grade anhedonia. My screen is still showing the code I was debugging three hours ago – a particularly obtuse memory leak. I fixed it, naturally. Always do. Another day, another incremental improvement to a system nobody truly understands but everyone relies on. The satisfaction is purely intellectual, a neat solution to a complex problem. No emotional resonance whatsoever. I found this brochure tucked inside a book I haven't opened in years, some forgotten impulse purchase about backpacking through Southeast Asia. I remember the feverish energy, the late-night research into visa requirements, the mental itineraries. I was 22. Before the offer from ‘Big Tech Company’ materialized. Before the student loan deferment ended. Before the vague but persistent social pressure to acquire a mortgage, a reliable sedan, and a spouse with a LinkedIn profile featuring ‘synergy’ somewhere in the description. Now, at 31, I’m objectively successful. The house has three bathrooms, the lawn is always cut, and my neighbors probably think I have a fulfilling life because I leave for the office at 7:15 AM sharp every weekday. They probably think I’m content. The brochure shows a beach. White sand. Turquoise water. A small hut. No Wi-Fi, probably. I imagine myself there. No commute. No stand-ups. No quarterly reviews where I have to articulate vague 'goals' that are essentially just 'more of the same, but slightly faster.' And the most bizarre part – I can’t actually *feel* anything when I imagine it. Not longing, not regret, not even a faint flicker of adventurous spirit. Just a detached observation of a parallel existence that, statistically, I could have chosen. It’s like looking at a simulation run with different initial parameters. The outcome is interesting, theoretically, but it doesn't impact my current state. What is that? A cognitive dissonance? A form of emotional atrophy? I just… don’t understand why the thought of it doesn’t even register as a loss. It’s just… data. And that’s probably the most unsettling part. This complete lack of a subjective emotional response. Like my internal barometer is permanently stuck on 'neutral.