What the last hour built

Check the clock in the corner of your screen. Now remember when you picked it up. The mood you're in didn't come from nowhere. You've been building it for an hour, one image at a time. Rest doesn't leave you feeling behind and vaguely accused. You weren't resting. You were collecting evidence against yourself.

That thing in your hand isn't a mirror. It's a comparison engine, and it's excellent at its job. It shows you the best two seconds of ten thousand lives and files them as news about yours. Your thumb has made the same little flick more times than you could count. You're not scrolling because you feel bad. You feel bad partly because you're scrolling.

A low you built by accident is still a low. And a low hour is exactly what a cigarette used to cash in on. You'd be handing your roughest hour a fresh excuse, over posts you won't remember by Thursday. The fastest way to protect a fragile evening is to stop feeding it.

When you finish reading, set the phone face down on the far side of the room. Open a window and stand at it for two minutes. God's been in this room the whole hour, waiting for you to look up. A real room is small and slow, and it's never once made you feel behind. You're already learning to set down things that feed on your low hours. This one's lighter. Set it down and keep your evening.