A Short Inventory of Things That Shouldn’t Be This Hard
If even the easy stuff has started asking for a conversation, something’s off.
Something like—
You open your laptop and stall.
You make the same decision you always make and somehow resent it.
You start something you know how to do and immediately want to lie down.
Meanwhile, everything around you looks normal enough. Your routines are still there. Your calendar is full of perfectly reasonable days. Your inbox is behaving like this is all very standard, nothing to see here.
And yet—everything takes more effort than it should. Like you’re doing your life through an extra layer of resistance.
If any of this sounds familiar, hi, welcome. In this post, we’re not going to analyze it to death. We’re just going to do what any rational, overthinking adult with a stack of notebooks would do:
Take inventory.
Here’s a list of things that are probably a lot harder than they should be.
Opening your laptop
You’ve opened this laptop approximately one million times before.
Today, it immediately asks things of you.
You sit there for a second too long, staring at the screen like it might blink first.
Making a decision you’ve already made 100 times
The lunch order.
The reply-all question.
The exact same choice you make on autopilot every other week of the year.
Somehow, everything now feels like a trick question.
Starting something that is, objectively, not hard
The thing you know how to do.
The thing you could explain to someone else.
The thing that has no business requiring this much psychic foreplay.
And yet, here you are. Negotiating with yourself like it’s a hostage situation.
Remembering what you like
Not what works.
Not what’s efficient.
Not what past-you set up, so present-you wouldn’t have to think.
What you actually like. Just… what actually sounds good.
Without needing a reason.
The answer exists. It’s just… not loading.
Explaining yourself
Someone asks how you are.
You consider several options. None of them feel accurate, so you pick “fine” and keep moving.
This is less dishonesty and more conservation of energy.
Switching modes
Work brain to human brain.
Human brain to social brain.
Pajamas to outside clothes.
Every transition takes an extra beat. Possibly two. Like your system is running an older operating system than it used to.
Ending the day and feeling like it didn’t quite count
Things happened.
You did them.
But it’s hard to point to anything that stuck.
The day ran. You attended.
Lists like this don’t show up out of nowhere.
They’re what’s left after a long stretch of doing everything you’re supposed to do—until even the basics start charging a weird premium.
It doesn’t always look dramatic. More often, it looks like an accumulation of small moments where things just don’t feel the way they used to.
If this list hit a little close to home, there’s a free thing called If You Need Me, No You Don’t.
It’s quiet. Low pressure.
It doesn’t ask much—or judge you if you forgot where you left your keys.
It just gives you a place to set the mental bags down for a minute, without turning it into a project.
