📰 Friday, May 22, 2026 — 8:54 p.m.
I got home a little while ago.
Sold seventy cases today.
I was running all over Los Angeles.
Strangely enough, it was fun.
Maybe because movement feels better than sitting still inside your own head.
Earlier today around 4:41 p.m., I drove to pick up more merchandise from our vendor.
The sun was still out.
Golden light resting softly on palm trees and the tops of buildings.
The 110 South was packed, but not frozen. Cars moved in waves. Fast enough to feel alive.
Ring. Ring.
“Roberto, hey, I just saw your message.”
“Hey Adane, I’m right around the corner.”
Wind pushed through the phone speaker on his end. It sounded like he had stopped eating halfway through lunch just to answer me.
At least that’s what it sounded like in my head.
“Oh boy, I am sorry sir, we’ve closed the gate. Everybody has gone home.”
“But are you still physically inside the building?”
Pause.
More wind.
Then some strange electrical noise from his old Windows XP laptop that he refuses to replace even though it freezes constantly and can barely survive modern software.
But that’s besides the point.
Sigh.
“Okay Roberto… but you gotta come through the office side.”
I didn’t feel bad about it.
Why should I?
The merchandise isn’t free.
The office stairs were white.
Never liked white walls much.
Long story.
Childhood.
I moved quickly up the stairs.
About to leave, I told him:
“Monday I’ll bring you guys Krispy Kreme donuts.”
Then the grin appeared.
A slight raise of the eyebrows.
Small human moment.
Golden light still resting on the buildings outside.
This whole week I was a different kind of tired.
Not work tired.
Rumination tired.
The kind of exhaustion that comes from circling the same thoughts over and over without resolution.
Today felt different though.
My battery died on Pico and Fedora earlier.
AAA dispatch answered.
Normally I would’ve panicked.
But I’m starting to realize maybe I need to relax more instead of mentally catastrophizing every inconvenience.
So I sat there and wrote.
Writing has quietly become my place to breathe.
The place where I unload the mess inside my head.
This week I discovered something important:
I would rather be exhausted from movement than exhausted from endless thinking with no direction.
For years I thought nobody would ever understand me.
Maybe some people still won’t.
But for the first time in a long time, I think I’m beginning to understand myself.
And strangely enough…
that feels like movement too.
💬 Reader Question
What kind of tired drains you more: physical exhaustion or mental rumination?
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