I always find myself over the week getting increasingly bleary-eyed and weary. I feel like this is probably the fate of most people who work the 9-to-5 grind. Today I was feeling it rather acutely. Getting out of bed was a trial this morning. I tossed and turned in my sheets like I was frying in a skillet. I hit snooze on my phone alarm over and over. The only thing that ended up getting me out of bed was the memory of an energy drink that was waiting for me in the fridge.

Yet despite sucking down caffeine on my commute to work, I still found myself uncontrollably yawning while sitting under the overhead lights of the office. When my coworker asked me, a couple hours into the shift, if I wanted to go on a coffee run with her, I practically jumped out of my seat.

The walk to the coffee shop was the highlight of my day, a time to get out into the sunshine and take a stroll. The air on my skin was like an ice-cold drink on a parched throat. It was refreshing and cleansing. But it was over all too quickly and then I was back in the staid office environment. Stuck in a seat, my body immobile except for my fingers tapping on a keyboard. Even though the office was silent, I could feel the bitterness and resentment rolling off my coworkers in waves. It came up off of them like heat shimmers and, though they said nothing, it colored the entire environment.

I wanted nothing more than to leave this stale place and be outside. I wanted to be in the sunshine. And specifically I wanted to be outside, where my body felt free and where I was away from the rage and other emotional contamination of my workplace.

But nature had other plans. By the time I got out of the office, the air was thick with humidity and the sky was darkening. The weather forecast was predicting heavy thunderstorms. So instead of staying outside in the sunshine, I once again had to retreat back inside, this time into my apartment. I flopped down into my bed and took a restless nap. I woke up sweaty and agitated. The fried food I had eaten for lunch left my palate dehydrated and grimy.

It was in this feeling of discontent and mild irritation that I sat down to write this essay. I wanted to take all of that low-grade restlessness and minor disappointment and try to craft it into something that had a little shape. I thought maybe doing so would allow me to take power back into my life the quiet indignities of modern life chip away at. I don’t know if my doing so has produced a masterpiece, or even anything that really needed to exist. But for a moment I did distract myself from the more irritating parts of being a living human. So, in that small way, it was worth it.