“Why am I feeling so melancholy?” he asked himself as he sat down at his computer, preparing for another long day of repetitive but difficult tasks at his second job — the second job he needs only because his first doesn’t earn him enough, no matter how hard he works at it, no matter how successful he is at the work.

“I’m just feeling so down, and I don’t know why,” he told himself, as he reminded himself to purchase the tickets sometime today so he can go visit his aging father. He adamantly doesn’t let himself think about how this could be the last time he sees the man who raised him, the man who will always be just slightly disappointed in him. Or about how he also needs to figure out how to go see his mother. He definitely doesn’t think about all of that chaos.

“I wonder what’s bothering me,” he ruminated to himself, seeing a notification that he would need to not eat anything for two hours before his appointment tomorrow, when a giant magnet will scan his head to see if there is a growth inside his ear canal which is causing the hearing loss and constant ringing he has been trying to ignore for the past year or two. His doctor assures him the growth, if it’s there, will be benign and slow-growing; the constant ringing, never getting much better or much worse since it appeared (which was probably just when he noticed it for the first time), says that the doctor is right. Though that still means that if there is a growth, then only surgery on his ear canal will alleviate the problem; and if there’s no growth, then he will have to live with this irritating sound, louder and more noticeable whenever there is a quiet moment, slowly growing louder and louder until it is the only thing he will ever hear again.

“I hate when I feel this way and don’t know why,” he complained to himself as he walked past the thermostat, which told him both that it needed servicing (The system had cost them more than they could afford a year ago, right after they bought the house they couldn’t really afford. He also doesn’t think about the inflation that has been moving up the price of everything, but never moving up his wages.) and that it was 80 degrees outside at 6:30 am. Seems like it never gets any cooler, these days. (He doesn’t think about the climate that would cost all of humanity more than they can afford in a generation or two. But he can’t do anything about that. That is, he hasn’t been able to solve the problem all by himself; he does what he can, and doesn’t think about what more he could do. He doesn’t think about this any more than everyone else does. Which is, of course, the problem. But he can’t solve that. Any more than he can solve the inflation or the political turmoil that the inflation is driving, which seems to be moving his country closer and closer to fascism. But he can’t do anything about that, so it’s better just to not think about it. Right?) But he needs to get to work.

He sits down at the computer, and as he begins to log in to the online test system where he will be scoring student essays (Always the same essay, over and over and over again) for the next several hours, he decides to stop and write about what he is feeling. “Maybe this will help me figure out what’s wrong,” he tries to convince himself, though he knows he shouldn’t be spending time writing, he needs to get to work, needs to get his hours in because they need the money, and writing — his passion, his calling, his greatest gift — has never been enough to earn a living. He has never been good enough to make a career out of it. And so he keeps teaching, and grading essays in the summer, and trying as hard as he can, every single day, not to let himself think about how he doesn’t ever have the time or the energy to write, and when he does find the chance to write, he has to keep himself from reflecting on how this writing, too, will not be good enough to get him what he wants, what he has always wanted. Because if he thinks about that, he won’t be able to find the words he wants, and finding just the right words is a great joy — and the only reward he gets from his writing, most of the time.

Himself, tired at last of listening to all this nonsense, tells him, “You’re kind of a fucking idiot, you know that? Maybe you should actually think about your thoughts, and actually feel your feelings; then you wouldn’t be confused by everything you suppress all the time.

“Dumbass.“

But he doesn’t listen to himself.

Instead he takes another sip of coffee and goes to work.

He’s sure everything will work itself out.