I saw something today that just… stuck with me. Our new marketing director, Sarah – bright woman, really – she was hunched over her desk at, oh, I don't know, maybe eleven at night? I was just finishing up some spreadsheets, a habit from the old days, can't break it. She's got this terrible headache, keeps rubbing her temples, but she's insisting to anyone who asks, which is usually just me, that it’s just her “seasonal allergies acting up.” Sarah, honey, it's November. The leaves are gone. I tried to tell her the project she was tearing her hair out over, the big client presentation for next week, was actually done. Finished. Her team, a good bunch of kids, they wrapped it up days ago. She just kept nodding and murmuring about "dotting the i's" and "crossing the t's" and then her voice kind of trailed off. Poor kid looked like she was going to keel over right there. It just brought me back, you know? Not to the headaches – thankfully never had too many of those – but to that drive. That feeling you get where you just HAVE to be the one to do it, even when everyone else has already done it better. I saw so much of my younger self in her tonight, staying late, "making sure" everything was perfect, probably just because I didn't trust anyone else to do it right. Or maybe I just didn't trust myself to stop. I remember one time, during my first tour, I volunteered for extra shifts cleaning latrines after a particularly nasty training exercise. Everyone else was out celebrating, and there I was, scrubbing away, telling myself it was "discipline." Really, I think I just didn’t know how to be still. It’s hard to shake that, even after all these years. The uniform comes off, but some of the habits, they just… stick. And now here I am, old enough to be her mother, or at least her slightly-older, wiser aunt, and I watch her, and I think, "You idiot, just go home." But then I look around, and I’m still here too. Typing this out on my phone at 2 AM, because what else am I supposed to do? Go home to an empty house? That’s not quite right. My house isn’t empty, it’s just… quiet. Too quiet sometimes. So I stay here, where there’s a purpose, even if the purpose is just to watch a younger version of myself make the same mistakes I did. Maybe I’m hoping to catch her before she really breaks, or maybe I'm just looking for absolution for myself, seeing her struggle. Either way, it’s not exactly a shining example of "retirement planning," is it? More like "retirement... avoiding." Ha.