Driven by overwhelm, I unlock my phone and scroll to the apps page. Mirror, mirror, help me find the answers to my many questions, even just one.

Before I’ve noticed I’m sucked into a vortex of consumption. Carefully guided by the hand of a software designer paid five times my wage, I check my emails. Clearly the thing I needed right now. I want to scream and cry and I’m tidying up my inbox instead. Control, maybe this is my way to regain any. I check the Substack feed—nothing to see here. I’m glad I don’t do this with LinkedIn, I’m fucked up enough. Last chance at it: I open one, two, three, WhatsApp chats. Oh nice, someone shared an article that seems half interesting. Let me see.

An eternity later, I feel what I think it feels to smoke an entire pack of cigarettes before breakfast. Disoriented. Emptied but also fuller. I’ve lost all sense of space and direction. I boarded a train I didn’t know I was on. How have I got here?

I need a breath of fresh air so I walk down and up into town. The sky is clearing, the salty air fills my skull, the neighbours’s cat is out, she lets me stroke her: miiiicio. Shortly after, I order a coffee, to stay in please, I talk to the baristas, we joke and smile and lock eye contact. For a split second all is good.

The question I was really asking an hour ago, I realise now, is how to be alive.