Sometimes you just… you just have to wonder what the point is, you know? Like, you spend all this time building up a reputation, saying all the right things, believing all the right things, and then you just… completely contradict yourself in the most pathetic, soul-crushing way. And then you feel like a fraud. Because you ARE a fraud. I mean, you become this loud voice in the community, the one who’s always at the town hall meetings, always posting on the local Facebook group about supporting our small businesses, about how important it is to keep the money *here*, in *our* town, with *our* neighbors. You talk about the butcher, the baker, the little hardware store down the road, and how we HAVE to protect them from the big corporations, the soulless behemoths that just want to swallow everything up. And you truly believe it, too! You really, truly do. But then, you know, your life happens. You get home from work, and you’ve been on your feet all day, dealing with… well, let’s just say *challenging* personalities and *unreasonable* expectations. And you’re just *drained*. Like, physically, mentally, emotionally, just… gone. You walk in the door, kick off your shoes, and all you can think about is making something quick for dinner, maybe watching one episode of that show everyone’s talking about, and then falling into bed. And you look at the empty bottle of dish soap under the sink, the last few squares of toilet paper on the roll, the almost-empty bag of dog food… and you think, “Okay, I *have* to get to the store.” And that’s when it hits you. It’s Tuesday night. The general store closes at five. The only other option is driving forty-five minutes to the next town over, which means an hour and a half round trip, plus the time actually shopping, and by then it’s nine o’clock and you haven’t eaten and the dog probably needs to go out again and oh my god, the thought of all that just makes you want to curl up in a ball and cry. So you open your laptop. You know, just to “check something.” And before you know it, you’ve got two gigantic boxes of… everything… arriving on your porch in two days. Because it’s *easy*. It’s disgustingly, shamefully easy. And you just… do it. Every single time. And then the boxes arrive, and your neighbor, old Mrs. Henderson, is out getting her mail, and she waves cheerfully and asks, “Oh, what did you get this time, dear?” And you just smile weakly and say, “Oh, just some… things!” As if she can’t see the logo plastered all over the side. The logo of the very company you rail against at every opportunity. And you feel this hot flush of shame, this absolute, gut-wrenching hypocrisy, because you’re *her* advocate! You’re supposed to be the one reminding *her* to buy her jam from the farmer’s market, not some online warehouse. And you just… you just want to sink into the ground and disappear. And the worst part is, you know you’ll do it again next week. Or the week after. Because the exhaustion doesn’t go away. The long drive doesn’t get shorter. The local stores don’t magically stay open until nine. And you just… you just keep perpetuating the problem, the very problem you’re supposedly fighting against, all because you’re too damn tired to be the person you pretend to be. And you get so MAD about it. So incredibly, incandescently furious. At yourself, mostly. But also at… everything else. The way things are. The way you’re supposed to be. And you just don’t know how to stop.