The Immediate Reflex
Not five seconds after I’d managed to stop sneezing-seven times, if you’re counting, a violent, rhythmic assault on my sinuses that left my eyes leaking and my dignity compromised-I found myself staring at the glowing ‘Play’ button on my screen. It was 13:41 on a Tuesday. The sun was slicing through my blinds with the kind of geometric precision that makes you feel like you’re being interrogated by a higher power. Outside, I could hear the muffled, busy hum of a world in motion: a delivery truck downshifting, a neighbor’s lawnmower, the distant whistle of a train carrying 31 cars of God-knows-what toward the coast. Everything about the soundscape screamed ‘productivity.’ Everything about my internal landscape was screaming for a distraction.
I clicked it. The window bloomed into life, a vibrant explosion of digital color that stood in defiant contrast to the dusty, beige reality of my home office. But the moment the music swelled, my hand twitched. My thumb hovered over the Alt key, my index finger poised on Tab. It’s a reflex I’ve honed over 11 years of working from home. It’s the ‘boss is coming’ flinch, even though I haven’t had a boss in a decade. It’s the physical manifestation of the belief that joy is only earned after the sun goes down, that
