I'm so busy, are you so busy?

It starts with a murmur so soft it’s hard to know if it’s real. It’s a hint of a whisper. It’s probably just in your head. But something isn’t right. You’ve become a swimmer who’s dived deep into a summer lake and you slowly find yourself rising until… yeah, you’re back.

Fully awake. In the dark. You lie still like a fawn but no one is fooled.

Check the clock. A low digit glows. The number hefts a gravity, a truth that surpasses morality or opinion or judgment. It’s unblinking. No matter what it reads, it’s far from wake up o’clock. It would be easier if you could hate it.

Take the pills. Slow the breathing. Stow your phone.

If you are lucky and blessed and you won the lottery and you were born on third base and things just always come easily to you, you submerge again. It’s a hot summer in the country. You’re at your favorite lake. You slide in; the water curls around you like a blanket.

“OK now where were we?” The commander with three day-old stubble and bleary but focused eyes barks at his men. “We’ve got full sunlight, I, at least, am fully ambulatory. Gimme a situation report. Let’s do this!” He rubs his jaw and surveys the battlefield.

It’s a clean kitchen with a laptop on the counter. There are no men. A coffee maker coos. A full day stretches in front of the lonely general. The time is like a basketball player leaning over to warm up for a game that will never come.

It’s cold because it’s winter. It’s warm because it’s spring. It’s humid or dry. It doesn’t matter. There are no seasons when you live alone and work from home. It’s just… daylight or dark. Morning, noon, night, repeat.

You’re back at work on a Tuesday or Saturday or Thursday. If it wasn’t for the radio announcer telling you that it’s not in fact five weeks ago, you’d swear nothing has changed. Same pajamas. Same mug. Same laptop. The only thing you know for sure is that you’ve de facto converted to Catholicism because you have proven that purgatory isn’t theological, it’s real. It’s everywhere.

There’s a lot of time to think about all the sins you’ve committed to deserve this stateless punishment. In a silent home. On a silent street. In a silent city. In a silent continent.

If you’re working from home making a semblance — or even an exuberance of — a solid income, then you have time to wonder if maybe you went to grad school too young and could have been, I don’t know, a film director or an oceanographer, pretty sure those are team sports.

Maybe you should have taken a gap year and not rushed this whole career thing, learned how to landscape garden or repair drywall. If you had done (more) therapy and knew yourself better at an earlier age you wouldn’t have completely fucked it up with [INSERT NAME] — so you wouldn’t be living alone day after day after…but wait! There’s news!

Purgatory by Ludovico Carracci who probably also worked from home.

Your phone has an announcement! Of many varieties! It’s a welcome annoyance, like a child calling your name over and over and over until you finally stop whatever it is you’re doing to lean down and look into its beautiful little eyes and ask “OK what would you like?” — then it has nothing to say. It was all about the announcement.

But you don’t have kids, silly. Your phone is no child, it’s a tool combined with an addiction so severe you can’t put the tool in a drawer or on a shelf when it’s no longer needed, because it’s always needed. It’s the irresistible calling. And it’s not alone.

Your phone has a quixotic sub/dom relationship with your laptop. Wouldn’t just one be enough, you wonder? But no, they’re both unicorns and they’re in love. That’s OK. No judgements. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could leave them to their own devices and get back to work?

But of course, they are the work.

You are both the factory worker and the product, toiling at the technology assembly line that has you working for the technology. You have a relationship to technology that didn’t exist when you were debating taking a gap year or maybe skipping college altogether for a fly-fishing career. This technological co-dependency is as inscrutable as a Mobius strip and as inescapable as an Escher staircase. All you know is you’re bound; not in the fun way.

So here we are, alone, in the quiet, contemplating a human relationship with two inanimate objects.

You’re at the bar. It’s dark outside. You’re no longer in pajamas but you are in recycled gym clothing from ten hours earlier. You talk to a human who isn’t your reflection for the first time in 24 hours. “Oh my God what a crazy day, I could barely get it all done” you say. “How was yours?”

The bartender pours you a drink and checks his phone. You nod to yourself and look at the glass. Don’t have much, or you’ll be awake in the too early hours, wondering if you should check your phone.