III ᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠ

I know this feeling. Not the loss of it exactly, but the moment you notice it’s gone. For me, it happened at the gym. This girl asked if I was done with the machine, and I just nodded and walked away. Didn’t even say the words. Just nodded. And I caught my reflection in the mirror across and barely recognised the person staring back. There used to be a version of me that would’ve said something, anything. Made her smile, asked how her workout was going, and existed in that moment like it mattered. But I was already thinking about my next set, my macros, and the work I had waiting at home. I grabbed my water bottle and thought, 'When did I become someone who just nods?' What I think happened is we started carrying the future differently. Not in the dreamy way we carried it when we were younger, when everything felt possible and distant. But in the accountant’s way. We began calculating the cost of things that used to be free. Talking to strangers used to feel like play. Now it feels like time. And time is the thing we’re supposed to be strategic about. We’re supposed to be building something. Moving toward something. So we perform this math in real time: Does this conversation serve my goals? What is the ROI of charm? And the terrible thing is, we’re not wrong. We do have things to build. The weight of that is real. It changes your posture, literally and metaphorically. You start moving through the world like someone with somewhere to be. But here’s what I’ve been learning: the self-awareness that makes you focused also makes you self-conscious. You become the kind of person who watches themselves in conversations, who edits while speaking. You catch yourself staring instead of seeing. Calculating instead of connecting. My uncle told me once, when I asked why he seemed quieter than he used to be, “I got tired of performing.” At the time, I thought he was just old. Now I wonder if he meant something else. Maybe what looks like losing your spark is actually just being more selective with your light. If maybe you don’t lose the ability to make people laugh, you just stop seeing it as your responsibility. I don’t know what happened to you. But I know what happened to me. I became someone with a plan. And plans have a way of making the present feel like a waiting room. You stop improvising. You start thinking of spontaneity as something you can’t afford. The only thing I’ve figured out is that the goals we’re so busy serving might actually need the part of us we’ve put away. The ease. The play. The version of ourselves that didn’t count the minutes. Because the person you’re becoming isn’t supposed to be smaller than the person you were. Sometimes now I make myself stop. At the gym, in the elevator. I make myself inefficient with my attention. I ask the unnecessary question. I laugh at the small thing. Not because I’m trying to get my rizz back or whatever we’re calling it. But because I’m trying to remember that I’m not just a project under construction. I’m also a person here, now, in this moment that doesn’t need to be optimised. I still see that girl at the gym sometimes. We nod at each other now, and that’s fine. But I think about that moment. How she asked a simple question, and I couldn’t even find words. Perhaps I’ve been confusing warmth with performance and presence with productivity. Personally, you didn’t lose anything. You just got heavier. And now you’re learning how to move with the weight.

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