There are days when everything feels…off. You snap at a co-worker over a harmless comment. A simple task feels impossible. Or you find yourself numb—emotionally detached and moving through the motions like a background actor in your own life.
I was about 30 minutes into a summer road trip through the desert—windows down, podcast up—when my dashboard lit up like a Christmas tree. I glanced at the temperature gauge. It was creeping past “normal” and inching toward the red. A minute later, steam started rising from under the hood like a kettle left too long on the stove.
When my rent went up by $375 overnight, I didn’t cry. Not right away, anyway.
