You know that feeling when you're just... done? Like you've spent twenty years building this house and you suddenly realize you hate the neighborhood and the architecture and everything about it. I’m sitting here at 2am with a glass of expensive wine that honestly tastes like vinegar tonight and I can’t stop thinking about dirt. This is so stupid and I'm probably just overtired but I had to get it out. I’m a VP, right? I handle "strategic initiatives" and I have a team of twelve people who wait for me to finish a sentence so they can all nod in unison, but today I walked past that community garden near the subway and I just... I almost fell apart right there on the sidewalk. It’s the smell. You know how when the soil gets wet after a heat wave and it has that heavy, almost metallic scent? It’s called petrichor... look at me using the sophisticated vocabulary while my hands are literally shaking. Anyway, there was this woman in there, maybe thirty or so, and she was just *digging*. She had this huge smudge of soil on her forehead and her hair was a disaster and she looked so... real. And I’m standing there in a four-hundred dollar blazer with my "professional" blowout, thinking about the Q3 projection report I just finalized, and I realized I haven't touched anything real in a decade. Sometimes you look at your life and it’s just this endless series of powerpoints and "circling back" on things that don't even actually exist in the physical world. You spend your whole day talking about efficiencies and EBITDA and then you go home and you're too exhausted to even cook a meal that didn't come in a plastic tray. My dad used to say that if you can't eat it or build a wall with it, it's just noise. And god, I have so much noise in my head. I left the farm because I wanted the city, I wanted the "prestige," you know? I wanted to be the girl who made it out and showed everyone she was smart. But what did I even make it into? I spent three hours today—three actual hours of my life—arguing about a font choice for the internal newsletter. THREE HOURS. While there’s people out there actually, like, growing things that keep people alive. When I was twenty, I thought my parents were stuck. I thought the farm was a prison of seasons and manure and broken tractors. But now I’m looking at my office window—which doesn’t even open, by the way—and I feel like the one who’s locked up. You ever feel like you traded your soul for a 401k and a corner office with a view of another office? It’s not a big deal, I know. It's totally fine. People would kill for my salary and my "career ladder" success. I should be grateful. I AM grateful, but... there’s this hole. You know? It’s like I’m a ghost inhabiting this corporate version of myself. I’m so TIRED of being polished and poised. I want to pull the weeds. I want my fingernails to be stained black for weeks and I want to feel the sun on the back of my neck until it stings instead of sitting under these flickering fluorescent lights that make everyone look like they’ve been dead for three days. I remember the way the heirloom tomatoes smelled back home. They were ugly, you know? Lumpy and weird colors, not like the plastic-looking ones at the grocery store. But when you sliced them... man. It was like tasting the sun. Now I spend my time worried about "brand identity" and making sure the stakeholders are happy. Who even are the stakeholders? It’s all just words. It’s all just... VAPID. I’m fifty-two and I don’t think I’ve done anything that actually matters to the world in fifteen years. I just move numbers from one side of a spreadsheet to the other. And the worst part is you can’t tell anyone. If I said this to my husband, he’d just ask if I’m having some kind of mid-life crisis and tell me to go to a spa. I don’t want a massage, I want to get my hands in the MUD. I want to feel like I’m part of the earth again instead of just another gear in this giant, stupid machine that doesn't produce anything but stress and more meetings to talk about the stress. It's like you spend your whole youth trying to get away from the dirt just to realize the dirt was the only thing that was actually solid. I’m looking at my hands right now and they’re so soft. They’re "professional" hands. They haven't done a hard day's work in forever. I keep thinking about that woman in the garden. She probably thinks I have it all together. She probably looked at my heels and my bag and thought I was some big-shot who has her life figured out. But I was literally JEALOUS of her dirt. How messed up is that? I’m sitting here in the dark, wondering if I could just... quit. But you can't, right? You have the mortgage and the car and the expectations and everyone thinks you're the "successful" one... it's a joke. I just keep thinking... what if I stayed? What if I hadn't been so obsessed with proving I was too "brilliant" for the sticks? Maybe I’d be happier. Maybe I wouldn’t feel like I’m suffocating every time I put on a blazer and log into a zoom call. Sometimes you just wake up and realize you've been running a race you never even wanted to win. And now I'm at the finish line and it's just... more spreadsheets. Everything is just so empty and I’m just... I’m just really sad, you know? I'm just really, really sad and I don't know how to fix it.