you know that feeling when you're just sitting there at the desk and the light hits the window across the street and you just feel like your brain is short circuiting. like you can actually hear the gears grinding in your head because you're supposed to be typing up some bullshit email about brand synergy but you're just watching this woman in the pottery place across the way get clay all over her hands. i mean she looks like shit her hair is a mess and she probably makes zero dollars but you're sitting there in your stupid blazer and your heart rate is doing this weird spike thing like a fuckin medical monitor gone haywire. it’s a very specific physiological reaction where the throat constricts and the palms get hit with a sudden burst of moisture. its funny how you just let things go because you're scared of being poor or whatever. you spend four years learning how to glaze and throw and talk about form and then you see a bill for a dentist visit or you think about what happens if you get sick and you just fold. you trade the kiln for a cubicle and tell yourself it’s the smart move because who needs to make pots when you can have a deductible and a ppo plan. i look at my hands now and they're just clean and soft and they do nothing but click a mouse all day long and it feels like a goddamn atrophy of the soul or something. just a slow clinical death of the nervous system where the nerves just stop firing because there's no input worth having. then you drive home to the suburbs and you see the neighbor steve power washing his driveway again at 6pm and you have to wave and smile like you aren't fuckin hollowed out inside. you gotta keep up the look for the kids even though they're basically grown and barely call unless they need money for their own stuff. you got the nice kitchen with the granite that everyone says you need and the lawn is green as hell but you're just standing there looking at the grass and feeling this heavy pressure in your chest like a physical weight pressing on your lungs. its a mechanical failure of the spirit. you can analyze the data all you want but the conclusion is always the same—you're just an empty vessel that carries around a corporate id badge. you gotta stay for the insurance though because your dad is in that home now and the bills for his care are just insane and if you quit to go play with mud you're basically killing him. so you sit in the marketing meeting and listen to some guy named tyler who is twenty years younger than you talk about engagement metrics and you feel your blood pressure rising in a very specific way. its like a tightening of the carotid artery. you can feel the pulse in your neck just thumping away while you nod and say yeah tyler that sounds great. it’s a performance. a very expensive high stakes performance that you're too old to quit now. you're a junior executive at fifty goddamn years old because you started over late and now you're just stuck in the basement of the corporate ladder. that woman across the street had this one bowl today that was this deep blue like the ocean or some shit and she was just holding it like it actually mattered. you watch her through the glass and you feel this sharp pang in your gut that feels like a literal ulcer forming in the lining of the stomach. it’s a localized pain right under the ribs. you realize you haven't felt that kind of attachment to anything you've produced in twenty years. all you produce is spreadsheets and emails that get deleted by people who don't care. you're just a cog in a machine that’s well lubricated by your own misery and the fear of losing your dental plan. so here it is at two in the morning and you're staring at the ceiling because your brain wont shut off and the silence in the house is just fucking deafening. you think about that kiln and the smell of the damp earth and how it felt to actually make something that existed in three dimensions. instead you got a 401k and a decent credit score and a sense of impending doom that follows you from the bedroom to the kitchen to the car. you wonder if everyone feels this way or if you're just particularly broken in a way that medicine cant fix. you look at the ceiling fan and count the rotations because it gives your mind a task that isn't thinking about how much time you have left. sometimes you just want to scream but you don't because the neighbors might hear through the walls and then you'd have to explain yourself to the hoa or something. so you just lay there and feel the cold air from the vent hitting your face and you analyze the situation like it’s a case study of a failing organ. patient exhibits symptoms of chronic regret and a total lack of interest in the corporate landscape. treatment includes more caffeine and pretending to care about the next quarterly review. its pathetic honestly. just a goddamn waste of a life because you were too scared of a little struggle and now you're just struggling anyway but with better furniture. you know you're gonna get up tomorrow and put on the blazer and drive the same route and look at that studio and feel the same exact thing. it’s a loop. a closed circuit. there’s no way out because you’re tied to the safety of it all like a dog on a short leash. you just keep staring at the dark and waiting for the sun to come up so you can start the whole miserable process over again. you just hope that one day you'll just stop feeling it altogether and the numbness will finally be total. maybe that’s what aging is—just the gradual decline of being able to feel how much you hate your own choices. but for now you're just awake and you're just... there. staring at the window and waiting for the alarm to tell you to go be a person again.