trumspringa n. the longing to wander off your career track in pursuit of a simple life—tending

the whipgraft delusion n. the phenomenon in which you catch your reflection in the mirror and get the sense that you’re peering into the eyes of a stranger,

lockheartedness

You never really get used to the feeling of being an individual. How strange it is that you’re born alone and die alone. That you alone must carry your own body, and your own name. Nobody else can feel the pain you feel, or hear the ringing in your ears, or will ever be able to share an unforgettable dream. You alone manage this particular

And when she’s alone, she’s someone else entirely, a person you’ll never get a chance to meet.

midsummer n. the point in your mid-twenties when your youthfulness expires as a valid excuse, leaving you accountable for your own station in life, even if you’re still only reeling from your past or planning for the future—which somehow makes time itself feel more urgent than before, until even the springtime pollen floating in the air reminds you

Maybe you’ll never get over the initial shock of existing at all, and will spend your life as a perpetual newcomer, still trying to catch your breath, right until the last.

humbled by how readily you place your life into the hands of random strangers, often without a second thought—trusting a restaurant to check its expiration dates, trusting a construction crew not to cheap out on materials, trusting thousands of other drivers to stay in their lane—people

scrough v. intr. to mindlessly perform a tedious task that nobody will ever notice, required by a bureaucracy that nobody fully owns, in pursuit of outcomes that nobody really wants.