I read that post about the lab tech, the one who stopped double-checking, and a cold wave just washed over me. Because *that* feeling, that exact gnawing anxiety, it’s a familiar ghost. It’s the phantom limb of a life not quite lived, the small, quiet betrayals we commit against ourselves for the sake of... what? Efficiency? Peace? To not make waves? I see that young woman, probably just out of college, eager to please, trying to keep up. I was her once, in a different kind of lab – the laboratory of home and hearth, where the experiments were endless, and the stakes often felt just as high. My days were a blur of small tasks, each one demanding a sliver of my attention, a fraction of my dwindling energy. There were so many lists, so many silent expectations. "Did you remember to call the school about the field trip?" "Is there enough for dinner?" "The lightbulb in the bathroom flickered again." And always, always, the underlying current of needing to be *enough*. I’d tell myself, "Just get it done, Martha. It doesn't have to be perfect. Good enough is fine." And I’d skip that extra check, that final once-over, letting a little detail slide, telling myself it wouldn’t matter. Most times, it didn’t. The dinner got eaten, the school call was made later, the lightbulb stayed flickering. But sometimes… sometimes it *did* matter, or at least, the fear that it *might* matter clung to me like a damp cloak. A forgotten permission slip, a mismatched sock in a freshly folded load that made one of the children sigh dramatically. These were trivial things, I know. But the constant low-level hum of possible failure, the sense that I was cutting corners, that my lack of *extra* effort might one day cause a ripple, a minor catastrophe, it was debilitating. It was the feeling of being perpetually under-qualified for a job I'd been doing for decades. And who would even notice? My husband would just say, "Oh, you forgot?" not understanding the immense mental labor of *not* forgetting. My children would move on to the next small crisis of childhood. Only I knew the quiet shame of that skipped check. It makes me wonder, we humans, why do we do this? This silent calculus of effort versus consequence. We’re taught to strive, to excel, to give our all. But then life piles on, and the sheer volume of *all* becomes crushing. So we economize. We triage our own integrity, just a little. And then we live with the ghost of what *might* have been, the shadow of the undone. That young lab tech, she’s probably telling herself it’s fine, that everyone does it. And maybe they do. But the anxiety, that’s her private burden. It was mine too. And I carried it for a lifetime, a secret tally of all the things I *almost* did, all the times I could have given more, but didn't. And now, looking back, that feeling hasn't really gone away. It just changed its form. Now it's the quiet thought, "Did I truly live fully? Or did I just… get by?" That technician, I hope she finds a way to make peace with the small compromises, or to find a place where she doesn't have to make them. Because that particular flavor of worry, the kind that whispers *what if* in the quiet hours, it’s a heavy companion. It doesn't really ever leave you.