Okay, so this is probably gonna sound completely insane, and I honestly don't even know why I'm typing this out, but I'm just… trying to figure out if this is, like, a thing. Or if I'm just finally losing it, you know? Like, I'm 31, I just got promoted to Senior Manager, I should be feeling good, but instead, I’m kinda obsessed with… this old man. Not in a weird way! Just, like, his… routine. He lives down the hall from me, a total recluse, never really see him, but I hear him. And I’ve started this whole thing where I’m checking his pulse. Not literally *his* pulse, obviously. My pulse. But because of him. I guess it started a few weeks ago, I heard him talking to himself one night, really quiet, something about his heart stopping. And then I started hearing this clock, like, a really loud tick-tock, every hour, on the hour. And then I realized, he's checking his pulse. Every hour. ALL NIGHT. And now I’m doing it too. Like, I’ll wake up at 1am, 2am, 3am, and I just *have* to feel my neck, right? Just to make sure it’s still there. Because what if it just… stops? What if I roll over and my heart just forgets to beat? And then I’m just gone. And it’s not even a big dramatic thing, just… silence. The idea that something so vital, so fundamental, could just… cease. Like a PowerPoint crashing, but with way higher stakes. And I’ll lie there, with my fingers pressed against my carotid artery, and if there’s even a single skipped beat, or it feels too slow, or too fast, I just spiral. Instantly. And the worst part is, I can't even tell anyone about this, can I? Like, "Hey boss, sorry I missed that early morning call, I was too busy having a panic attack because I thought my heart was going to stop mid-sleep, just like my elderly neighbor's heart probably will one day." No. Absolutely not. Everyone at work is talking about succession planning, about hitting those Q3 targets, about "leveraging synergies," and I'm over here hyper-focusing on my pulse. It’s like I have this completely irrational, morbid preoccupation with cardiac arrest every single night. And I don’t even know what it *is*. Is it just anxiety? Is it some kind of, like, anticipatory grief for my own eventual mortality? Because honestly, I usually don’t even think about that stuff. I’m thinking about my annual review, about how to finesse that promotion to Director, about whether I should start looking at houses even though the market is insane. This just feels so… out of character for me. And I just can't shake it. Like, what even IS this feeling?