There's a specific kind of exhaustion I feel most days on my way home. Some of it is from work itself. But most of it is from what's waiting after it. I catch myself hoping, almost every evening, that today will be different. Quieter. Easier. I don't know why I keep expecting that, given how rarely it actually happens. But I do. Then I open the door, and it's the opposite. Complaints before I've even taken my shoes off. Shouting from one room or another. Something got broken,

Someone asked me recently what I do for fun. I paused. Not because I didn't understand the question. But because the answer took longer to arrive than it should have. I used to know immediately. There were things I looked forward to. Things that were just mine. Not useful. Not productive. Not for anyone else. Just things that made the week feel like it had something in it worth getting to. I can't tell you exactly when that changed. There was no moment. No decision. No mornin

Every few months, it's time for another health report — the same kind that once completely caught me off guard. And I've started noticing what I actually do in the days before it: I wait. I don't spend that time working on what the last report flagged. I don't check in on myself, notice what's actually shifted since then. I just wait for the numbers to tell me — as if the report itself is the only proof that counts, not anything I might have felt or noticed on my own in betwe