My day begins before I am out of bed. There are too many dreams to count or remember, but each leaves me more stressed than the last. Stress is a signal that helps us attend to threats. In this case, the threat is self-generated. The call is coming from inside the house. My brain is an asshole with a penchant for crank calls. Half asleep, my brain hazily reasons that my only option is to sleep it off. Sure.

 I wake up much earlier than I am used to, but my brain was right– I feel refreshed–giddy, even. It is me and my wife’s anniversary. As much as I love my wife, I will not inflict you with pages of me gushing about her and our relationship. As my niece has informed me, that kind of lovey-dovey talk is “disgusting.” 

I am not ready to brave the harsh, frigid environment on the other side of the blankets, so I opt to stay in bed and read a book on my phone. I pull the covers over my head so the light does not wake up my wife and settle into “Citadels of Pride” by Martha Nussbaum, a book on the philosophical foundations of legal frameworks that address sexual harassment and assault. It is not a light read for 6:30 in the morning. Or anytime, really. Yet, it is exactly what I need. Cozy as a daytime hospital procedural and true crime podcast before bed. There is something comforting about trying to process the horrific into the formulaic. 

Once we are both awake, we have breakfast– baked cinnamon crunch French toast stuffed with cream cheese. Yes, it was exactly as good as it sounds. No, I do not need to eat that much sugar in one sitting again. Later, I go back for seconds. It is my anniversary after all.

We settle on the couch and read before really starting the day. Martha will have to wait. Middle-Earth needs my attention. The Fellowship of the Ring is an odd book. For a story that kicks off the most iconic series in the genre (possibly any genre), it is surprisingly… slow. And many characters are virtually interchangeable for much of the book. And as I am horrible with directions even in my hometown, much of the literal plotting of their journey is all but impossible for me to track, even with a map at the front and back of the book. And yet, I am thoroughly charmed by the lush landscapes, strokes of fortune, and history of Tolkien’s world. When Frodo finds refuge in Rivendell, I feel he is safe enough that I can put the book down for now.

I am unemployed (I prefer the term pre-employed, since I technically have a job. I just don’t start working for another two weeks) which means my days are largely filled with half-hearted attempts to fill them. But today is my time capsule day. I am on call and need to do something exciting. Or not. I proceed to argue back and forth with myself about this with all the sincerity of a kid who promises to wait for a second marshmallow before eating the first one. So I choose something decidedly less interesting for you than it is for me– Dungeons and Dragons. I am way too excited to use a new platform for creating genuinely interesting and realistic dungeon maps. I will not bore you with the details, but trust me when I say they are actually pretty cool. Or not. There are 364 other time capsules if table top role playing games are not your thing. 

Anyways, once I finish the maps I go to print them. An hour later I am sweating with rage. My jaw is clenched and every breath is audible, almost palpable, regardless of where you are in the house. I have never met a printer I liked, much less this stupid thing whose troubleshooting instructions are essentially one maddening tautology: Error: The printer is not online. Please follow the instructions in the application to connect the printer to WiFi. Instructions: 1. Turn on the printer. 2. Connect the printer to the wifi. 3. Once the printer is online…

My wife offers to help several times, but I am stubborn, so I will figure out how to do this on my own. Half an hour later she gets it online in 5 minutes. But the printer is out of ink. Surprisingly this cheers me up. This situation is simply too ridiculous to be genuinely upset. Crisis averted/avoided and for the next hour I am a necromancer. I strategize the optimal usage of spells and vantage points for the boss of the dungeon. I spend far too much time figuring out how to almost-but-not-quite kill people who do not exist. 

Much of the day goes by in a haze that both flies and drags. I cycle between halfway finished chores, political rage-bait on reddit, chess and other mobile games. The joys of ADHD and pre-employment. The chores are mostly done after a few cycles, but the political stress never really dissipates. How can it? There is an ever-coursing stream of distress a click away. Not even a click. The screen’s slick surface and subtle haptics make it nearly impossible to register the transition from mindfully tracking my day for this capsule to the time warp that is doom scrolling. Politics is is always ultimately physical, embodied at the end of a particular cop’s billy-club, but its echoes leave me in a liminal space where I am either preaching to an inert choir or stonewalled by those who are content to see and hear no evil, but speak it with pride.

My eyes strain and my neck creaks and I do not know what to do with this feeling. But I know I woke up in a warm bed. I know that much of my day has been filled with joy and giddy talks with my wife. And I know, right now, that my dog needs to pee. He eats everything and recently had to get a whole bundle of things surgically removed, so he is not allowed in the backyard without a basket muzzle. He has not worn it before and so the game begins. It’s not really a game, so much as him trying to eat the muzzle (I wish he understood the irony) before I can slip it over his face, but I think he enjoys it. Once it is on, he bolts so quickly that he closes the door with his skull before he can even get outside. I let him try again. He does not slow down as he rams his way through the barely opened door. My smaller, older dog moseys outside seemingly as baffled as I am. 

I get to work on an early dinner– creamy angel hair pasta and sundried tomatoes. The garlic cooks in lightly brown butter, and I can hardly remember my own name. I inhale.The stock reduces and thickens with parmesan, and if I could have remembered then the reasons for my stress, I would not have understood them. 

My wife and I eat and think back on the last several years. At some point, I realize that in a year I will have known her for exactly half of my life. After dinner, we go to our massage appointment. There are many things I could say about this. I could describe how difficult it was to quiet my brain. I could say that it was one of the most indulgent experiences I have ever had (far better than any massage or spa treatment either of us have had by a long shot). I could try to explain the techniques and sense of relief I felt. However, all of these descriptions would be exactly that, descriptions— clunky and missing the point. 

Afterwards they serve us Thai Tea and biscuits. In relative silence, I remember a client at my last job, a mother who was prescribed a cocktail of tranquilizers to combat the symptoms of her PTSD, but could only sleep after doing yoga with her children. 

I remember that she was doing better by our last session and my shoulders sag under a warm cloud of steam wafting from the tea.