I take stock of my life the way I inventory a room I already know well.
Not by searching for problems. Not by bracing for surprises. Just by noticing what’s there, what hasn’t shifted, what still belongs.
Morning comes without resistance. I wake before my alarm, not jolted, not tense, just aware of the light shifting through the thin gap in the curtains. It’s the kind of pale, early light that doesn’t demand attention. It just exists. The packhouse is quiet in the specific way it gets right before everyone else stays. Not silence. More like a held breath, the space between one movement and the next.
I lie there for a minute, hand resting on my stomach, feeling the even rise and fall of my breathing. No tightness in my chest. No reflexive mental checklist of things I should already be wo
