The young man who toasts my lunch sandwich hands me the warm foil parcel with a helping of deliberate eye-contact and a coaxing smile. “You’re less sigh-y today.”

“Oh!” I am all awkward chuckles. It was that obvious? “Yeah. I guess my week picked up.”

Back in the office Kitchen, I sit closer to the crowd. We speak of nothing, trivialities, summer camp, birthday parties, make-up. And it’s good. I realize I am just present for this. I am not apart, aching for silence and space because, just now, my own head is uncluttered.

The lunch is finished, a communal brownie is shared and then gone, the wrappers folded and I am cleaning up. And to the man around whom I must lean to load the dishwasher, I have without any effort of will offered a cheerful greeting and my biggest smile. I am buoyed by good spirits and when I move, it rolls off me in waves. From the corner of my eye, I see his eyes widen in response.

In that small demonstration, I read hunger for approval. On any other day, I would accuse myself of projecting.

Today I felt socially powerful. I gave cheerful greetings. My jibes and sallies were gentle. I appeared magnanimous and approving. My skin is a permeable emotional membrane, I think. When I am vulnerable, everything flows in, sets my mind to polluted swirling. And when I am well, it all flows out and washes over everything I touch.

I had a programming task of some magnitude today. It has been three years and I have not done much other than content design and admin and training and documentation. I used to fight hard trying to get more challenging tasks, but I am more resigned these days. I let others take the lead, I back down and defer.

But this week I was to tackle something in concert with two Senior Developers. And by Wednesday, my partners had not been able to free any time. So on Thursday, I started it alone and by the end of Thursday it was barely started and quite overwhelming.

This morning I looked hard at it and I let it overwhelm me. I sunk into it, racing only to see how much I could get done in one day. I was tuning out the world. I was losing track of time.

And I was a far nicer person when I was done.