Cinemorphosis

Author: Jeffrey McMahon

  • The Woman in the Corner

    The Woman in the Corner

    Last night’s dream stripped me bare. I was at a beach compound that seemed to stretch forever, the waves pacing back and forth like guards. My companions drifted in and out of focus—sometimes they were cops in rumpled uniforms, sometimes professors in tweed, and sometimes both at once. I alternated between the two roles without effort, my badge turning into a fountain pen and back again.

    Then the letter arrived. The envelope was the weight of a confession. Apple headquarters. Inside, a memo on paper so white it seemed to hum. In the upper right corner, a photograph of a woman: steel-gray hair, bifocals balanced on the edge of her nose, eyes fixed on me as if she could see through my ribs. Her expression carried the inevitability of gravity.

    The memo stated plainly: You are a fraud. Your life will be dismantled.

    I looked up from the page and the dismantling had already begun. My invitation to a retirement party—revoked. Chairs scraping, conversations halting, faces turning away. The compound’s air grew thick and briny, as if the ocean were climbing into the rooms to watch.

    I woke with the letter still in my hand, though it dissolved before I could read it again. The feeling remained: the certainty that I had been living in two incompatible worlds and the border guards had finally compared notes.

    I sat up and reached for a book, any book, to hold onto something real. It was Phil Stutz. I reread his words on “the lower channel,” that slow, dirty current of short-term gratification. I could almost hear it lapping at the shore, waiting for me to wade in again.

  • Will Optimization Kill the Joy of Mechanical Watches?

    Will Optimization Kill the Joy of Mechanical Watches?

    Sometimes I wonder how technology might assassinate my love for timepieces. Picture this: a $200 spool of 3-D printer feedstock spits out your $10,000 grail watch. Eight years later, when the mechanical movement needs servicing, you don’t take it to a watchmaker—you print another.

    If watch-printing is as easy as making pancakes, I’d have thousands. Would I be happy? No. I’d be the spoiled rich kid sulking in his palatial bedroom because Mom and Dad bought him every toy but a bazooka.

    “Son, I bought you everything.”
    “But I want a bazooka.”
    “They’re illegal.”
    “I don’t care!”

    When everything is instant, the “holy grail” becomes an inside joke. The magic dies in the flood of abundance. Just ask the diamond industry. Lab-grown stones are flawless, cheap, and undetectable to the human eye—obliterating the romance of bankrupting yourself for an engagement ring. Watches could be next.

    And that’s just one front. On another, tech billionaires are funding biohackers to keep us ticking for 900 years. If I’m going to live to 85, time feels urgent. If I’m going to live to 900, time is a leisurely brunch. Chronological time starts to matter less than biological time—the wear and tear written in my cells.

    In that world, your Rolex Submariner won’t tell you what matters. Your doctor-prescribed smartwatch will, tracking cardiovascular vitality, antioxidant levels, and the sorry truth of your lifestyle choices. Refuse to wear it, and your insurance premiums explode tenfold or you’re cut off entirely. Privacy? Gone. Your vitals are known to your insurer, employer, spouse, dating app matches, and the guy at your gym checking your actuarial risk.

    When the mechanical watch dies, so does your privacy. And somewhere, Dale Gribble from King of the Hill is finding the conspiracy angle.

    Give it five years. Our “watch collector meet-up” will look more like group therapy for mechanical-watch dinosaurs funding their therapists instead of their ADs. But fear not—obsession never dies, it just changes costume. Post-watch, your new drug will be optimization.

    You’ll strap on your OnePlus Watch 3, buy a $2,600 CAROL resistance bike, and simulate being chased by a saber-toothed tiger because “hormesis”—that holy word—demands mild ordeals to make you live forever. Resistance intervals, intermittent fasting, cold plunges. Goodbye winding bezels; hello gamified cell stress.

    Our poster boy? Bryan Johnson—the billionaire fasting himself pale, zapping his groin nightly to maintain the virility of a high school quarterback. Critics say he looks like a vampire who’s just failed a blood test. I say he’s the future. Picture him at 200, marrying a 20-year-old and siring a brood. Male Potency and Reproductive Success: the distilled recipe for happiness.

    Except I’m kidding. The truth: peer-reviewed science says we might beat the big killers before 90—heart disease, cancer, stroke, Alzheimer’s—but the biological ceiling is still ~100. Eventually your organs quit. All the optimization in the world won’t rewrite that.

    As a watch obsessive, I know the tyranny of time. The biohackers are fixated on biological time as if it’s the only kind that matters. But the Greeks knew a third: kairos—the moment saturated with meaning, purpose, connection. All the Bryan Johnsons in the world can’t 3-D print that.

    Live 200 years without kairos and you’re not a winner; you’re a remake of Citizen Kane with a garage full of exotic cars and no friends.

    A long time ago, a friend told me about the night cocaine hollowed him out so completely that he didn’t care his best friend was kissing his girlfriend. Then a voice in his head said, “Dude, you should care.” He went to rehab the next day. That’s soul work.

    And that’s what’s missing from the longevity cult: soul work. Without it, all the tech, watches, and optimized mitochondria in the world are just a shiny grift.

  • Will Living Forever Affect Your Timekeeping?

    Will Living Forever Affect Your Timekeeping?

    Like most people, I want a long life. Every morning, no matter my mood, I spring from bed eager to make dark-roast coffee and buckwheat groats with vanilla protein powder, soy milk, and berries. The more miles on my life odometer, the better—so long as those miles are smooth: no bureaucratic migraines, no addictions, plenty of income, spiritual ballast, connection with others.

    That’s why I read Tad Friend’s essay “How to Live Forever and Get Rich Doing It” with interest. Friend profiles 64-year-old Peter Diamandis, an optimist convinced we’re on the brink of breakthroughs: blood filters to block cancer, sound waves to detect strokes, mood-zapping tech for depression. He calls Diamandis “an emissary from the realms of possibility.”

    Tech billionaires have practically built vacation homes in the land of eternal youth, wiring obscene sums into anti-aging startups like it’s Monopoly money. Sure, the wealthy already get a 12-year head start on the poor, but most scientists insist the afterparty ends around 90. We’ve smacked into the “biological ceiling.” As for the 900-year marathons of Noah and Methuselah—please. They were breathing alpine air untainted by lead, cadmium, or mercury, not commuting through rush-hour smog in a Tesla.

    Diamandis and his circle press ahead anyway, bankrolled by billionaires who can’t resist the dream. Along the way, I learned a new term: hormesis—mild ordeals that supposedly trigger cellular resilience. Exercise? Fine, because it comes with endorphins. Semi-starvation? No thanks—I’m not interested in being hungry and cranky for decades. Cold plunges? Too much Instagram posturing. I’ll splash my face with cold water. That’s good enough for me.

    Some biohacks drift so far into self-parody they could headline at a comedy club. Take CAROL, a resistance bike that has you pretend a saber-toothed tiger is on your tail, all in the name of channeling your inner Neanderthal sprinter. As Tad Friend drily notes, Neanderthals weren’t exactly poster children for longevity—they usually tapped out before 30.

    Then there’s Bryan Johnson, the longevity poster boy, on a semi-anorexic diet, flexing for the camera, and blasting sound waves through his loins to reclaim teenage virility—an evidence-free vanity project if ever there was one.

    Friend notes that many biohackers avoid the news entirely; Diamandis calls it “amygdala-stimulating dystopian clickbait.” Conveniently, this shields him from rebuttals—odd, since science supposedly thrives on them.

    Some predictions verge on male fantasy: 100-year-old moguls marrying women half their age and siring fresh broods as proof of potency. Joe Polish, a former collaborator, nails the pitch: “A compelling offer is ten times more powerful than a convincing argument.” Translation: they’re selling a dream, not a reality.

    Don’t get me wrong—I want research that crushes heart disease, cancer, stroke, and Alzheimer’s. But even if we slay those dragons, organ and metabolic failure will still get us before 100. Immortality, as marketed here, is mostly grift, mostly ego.

    The essay veered into timekeeping, which I track as a watch obsessive. Longevity researchers distinguish between chronological time—the calendar—and biological time, measured through DNA methylation, blood biomarkers, organ imaging, and physical function. Dave Asprey claims his 52-year-old body is 18. I doubt it. Maybe 40 on a good day.

    Still, biological age matters. Functional strength predicts survival: slow-walking 85-year-old men die sooner than the fast walkers; those who can bathe themselves outlive those who can’t.

    But what does a long life mean? Picture a greedy, paranoid recluse with 5,000 luxury watches, 12 cars, and a private jet, living to 200. That’s not winning—that’s a remake of Citizen Kane.

    In the end, spiritual rehab beats the obsessive tinkering of physical micromanagement. Back in the ’80s, a friend told me how cocaine had sandblasted his capacity to care—about his life, his girlfriend, even himself. One night, he woke up under a heap of half-conscious bodies in a party’s stale, smoky gloom. In the corner, through a haze of spilled beer and burnt-out joints, he saw his glassy-eyed girlfriend making out with his equally blitzed best friend. He felt nothing—no jealousy, no rage, just a numb vacancy. Then, from somewhere deep inside, a voice cut through the chemical fog: “Dude, you should care.” The next morning, he checked into rehab and began the slow, grueling work of putting his soul back together.

    That’s the missing piece in the longevity movement: not more years, but more humanity. Health matters. Exercise matters. But without soul work, you’re just buying time for an empty vessel.

  • The Paradise Hangover

    The Paradise Hangover

    Yesterday I posted a 24-minute video on my YouTube channel about my family’s trip to Oahu—about slipping into what I call Sacred Time—and about the sullen resentment that comes when you’re yanked back into Profane Time. In Sacred Time, there are no utility bills, no kitchen repairs, no inbox choked with memos. In Profane Time, there’s nothing but.

    There’s a lag between the two realms. The body may be back at the desk, moving through the motions of Profane Time, but the mind and heart are still on an island, half-convinced they’ve found a loophole in the laws of mortality.

    In that sacred dimension, we become a mythic version of ourselves—effortless raconteurs, irresistible charmers. The hotel bartender laughs at your jokes. The maître d’ nods in worldly agreement when you talk about sunsets and seared ahi. Their warmth feels real, not transactional. And you start believing the PR you’ve written for yourself. Then you fly home, and the whiplash from god-king to bill-payer is too much to bear.

    It reminded me of a woman I met nearly twenty years ago in a frozen-yogurt shop in Torrance. My wife and I were waiting in line when she appeared: tall, angular, maybe in her sixties, the ghost of a former beauty. Short blonde hair with a whiff of style still clinging to it, smeared red lipstick, tight leopard-print pants, and high heels that had seen better decades. She carried her currency—hundreds of pennies—in a crumpled paper bag.

    She spilled them, along with her dessert, across the tile floor. I bent to help her, feeling the full weight of her story without knowing any details. I imagined her as a former starlet who once walked red carpets, who’d been adored, flattered, invited everywhere—until one day she wasn’t. She’d never made the identity shift from somebody to nobody, and that inability had swallowed her whole.

    Self-mythologizing is dangerous. Whether you’re a faded Hollywood beauty or a sun-dazed tourist just off the plane from paradise, you have to face the comedown. Adult life demands it. The mythical and the mundane need each other—without the grind, the magic loses its shine.

    So yes, I’m sulking about my return from Hawaii. Yes, I’d rather be sipping mai tais than buying new blinds and a desk for my daughter. But that’s the deal. Profane Time pays for Sacred Time. You can’t live in one without surviving the other.

  • Hawaiian Vacations Are About Stepping Outside the Clock and Cheating Death

    Hawaiian Vacations Are About Stepping Outside the Clock and Cheating Death

    Spend a week with your family in Hawaii and you slip into a parallel time zone—one that ignores clocks altogether.

    It starts the moment you survive five airborne hours in a 400-million-dollar jet. You land feeling like Superman, minus the cape and plus a mild dehydration headache. Within 24 hours, you’re barefoot, in swim trunks, marinating in mai tais, spooning loco moco into your face, and demolishing lilikoi pies. The weather is so perfect it feels like it was made to flatter you personally. Sunsets become private screenings. You have no deadlines, no alarms, no reason to measure the day except by the height of the tide or the level in your glass.

    In this dimension, you’re not just on vacation—you’ve stepped outside of time. And outside of time means outside of death. Some corner of your brain starts whispering that you’re untouchable. Immortal.

    That’s when the trouble starts.

    The thought of getting back on a plane becomes revolting. It’s not just leaving Hawaii—it’s leaving Sacred Time and returning to Profane Time. Back to the grind where schedules nag and mortality hides in every bathroom mirror.

    Even after you land at home, you’re not really home. You’re in a kind of sun-drunk denial, still hearing the ocean in your ears while the neighbor’s leaf blower whines outside. The older you get, the worse the hangover—because you know the clock is running, and the illusion of timelessness is an intoxicant more potent than any cocktail with a paper umbrella.

    And then it’s over. You reenter the machine. Days are counted in emails, not waves. The tan fades, and with it the fantasy that you’ve cheated the countdown. That’s the real brutality of reentry—not the weather, but the eviction notice from the one place that convinced you, however briefly, that you could live forever.

    So yes, I’m already searching for Big Island resorts. It’s not wanderlust—it’s a hunt for my next fix of immortality. And I know the danger. One day I might just stay.

  • The Soul Sorting Hub

    The Soul Sorting Hub

    Last night I dreamed I’d landed in purgatory, and it wasn’t clouds and harps—it was a warehouse. Not just any warehouse, but a sprawling hub the size of the UPS facility I worked at in Oakland in the early ’80s. Conveyor belts snaked through the place, machines hissed and clanked, but no parcels moved here. This was a sorting center for souls.

    Some souls were shipped out, upgraded. Others were stamped REJECT and sent down a darker chute to wherever rejects go. I was parked in a waiting room with a handful of others, each of us marinating in that bureaucratic dread—half DMV, half Judgment Day—waiting to hear if we were worth the trouble.

    When my number came up, the Maker looked me over and decided I’d make the cut. My old, corroded soul was extracted without so much as a twinge. It turned out to be a rectangular device—part ancient relic, part broken office machine—perforated and inscribed with faint glyphs. The sound it made was pitiful, like a player piano gasping out a bad lounge act.

    They gave me a new roll, a clean mechanism tuned for beauty. My spirit now ran on melodies that could stop people in their tracks. Freed from the grime of my old hardware, I was incapable—almost physically incapable—of my old toxic habits.

    In my new life, I didn’t busk, didn’t carol, didn’t sell myself. I simply stood outside strangers’ homes, and music poured out of me, as if the air itself had been waiting for me to start. People welcomed it. They welcomed me.

    The real miracle wasn’t that I made music worth hearing. The real miracle was that, for once, I was in harmony with myself.

  • My Week in Oahu with the Seiko SPB143

    My Week in Oahu with the Seiko SPB143

    As a watch obsessive, my Hawaiian packing list starts with one burning question: which watch gets the honor? The choice was obvious—it would be a diver. That’s not a bold decision; it’s the only category I own. And it would be a Seiko, naturally, because my watch box is a one-brand dictatorship.

    I admire other marques—Citizen, G-Shock, Omega, Tudor—but I don’t mix brands. It’s not snobbery; it’s a survival mechanism. Introducing another brand into my rotation feels like switching from German chocolate cake to lemon meringue mid-bite. I like lemon pie, but the chocolate-coconut symphony is wrecked. My horological palate is scrambled.

    Call it idiosyncrasy, call it neurosis—either way, I’m trying to be crazy about watches without tipping into full padded-cell territory.

    For Oahu, I strapped on my Seiko SPB143. Wore it for a week straight. By day three, I was smitten; by day seven, besotted. Sleek, comfortable, unpretentious—like the rare friend who doesn’t demand you upgrade your personality. I’d stroll through the tropical paradise of Honolulu and stop mid-step to admire the dial. My family no longer asks. Dad’s just off in his little watch trance again.

    And yet, as soon as I got home, I was ready to swap it out. Turns out my “One and Done” fantasy is a sham. Every watch, no matter how perfect, eventually needs a pinch-hitter.

    While in Honolulu, I kept tabs on the local horological fauna. Ninety-five percent of the tourists wore smartwatches. It’s not a trend; it’s a coup. They’ve paired with the phone—ubiquitous, addictive—and won the war. Wearing a mechanical diver made me a walking anachronism, an analog lighthouse in a digital tsunami.

    I’m used to that. I still play an acoustic Yamaha piano, tuned by 76-year-old Cecil, who informs me there’s now only one piano-tuning school in America. Digital keyboards are coming for his livelihood the way smartwatches came for mine.

    I’m no Luddite—I read on a Kindle, let AI red-pen my prose, and churn content on YouTube and WordPress. But I keep three analog sanctuaries: my mechanical watches, my Yamaha piano, and my kettlebells. They’re my stubborn tether to the tangible world.

    Oahu itself blindsided me. I’ve been to Kauai and Maui, but Oahu’s mix of international energy, relaxed hospitality, and infrastructure that doesn’t buckle under tourism made me wonder if it’s my new favorite. I met Mark, a guitarist at Tommy Bahama’s, and Zach, a world-class golf caddie, both of whom swore by the lush northeast of the Big Island. I’m already looking at $600-a-night resorts.

    My family’s proud I can now fly to Hawaii or Miami without melting down in the cabin. Claustrophobia and flying anxiety used to keep me grounded, but I’ve discovered the cure: Audible books and noise-canceling headphones. Five hours in the air is fine; six is mutiny. Europe is off the table. I apologize to my family, but at least I’m better than John Madden—he wouldn’t get on a plane at all.

    Now I’m home. Technically. Physically. But mentally? Still on the lanai. That’s the thing about vacation—it’s sacred time, separate from the profane ticking of everyday life. When you come back, you don’t really come back. The connection to your family, to yourself, to paradise—it lingers, stubborn as a tan line. And the older you get, the harder it is to shake.

    So yes, I’m back. But I’m also already gone—scanning Big Island resorts, plotting my next escape, and quietly wondering if, one day, I just won’t return at all.

  • Trees Bent by the Wind

    Trees Bent by the Wind

    In An Abbreviated Life, Ariel Leve recounts the shadow her mother cast across her existence—a narcissistic, volatile presence who trailed her daughter across continents. Her mother blurred boundaries, confiding adult affairs, romantic escapades, and private fantasies to her child, then lacing those disclosures with guilt trips and psychological sabotage.

    At eleven, Ariel was told she was going blind—a lie without evidence, a mix of cruelty and madness. This was not an isolated cruelty but the common cadence of her mother’s speech. At six, Ariel’s caretaker, Kiki, died of a stroke mid-flight, with Ariel in the cabin. Ariel stopped speaking for six months; a psychiatrist prescribed Valium.

    Her mother, often wearing a nightgown even to school functions, could deliver barbed declarations without breaking her routine. “When I’m dead, you’ll be all alone because your father doesn’t want you,” she told her young daughter, pausing only to reapply makeup. “Just remember that and treat me nicely.”

    Her father, in Bangkok, refused to take her in. Ariel lived in grief that he wouldn’t rescue her from the chaos. Decades later, a therapist told her that growing up with such a mother caused neurological damage—her brain, shaped by constant stress, had developed like a tree twisted by relentless wind. Trauma was not a lightning strike; it was climate. The result: a life stripped of adventure, self-acceptance, and trust. Ariel’s default mode became hypervigilance and retreat.

    Her partner, Mario, an Italian with no literary ambitions, no awareness of New York publishing, and no taste for bagels, embodies the opposite—balanced, unselfconscious, open to life. He steadies her, if only temporarily.

    In one conversation, her father asked if she could let go of the past. Could she destroy her demons? Ariel was unsure. A novelist told her discipline could harden one’s “emotional arteries,” making childhood wounds less decisive. Ariel countered: some are “front-loaded with trauma,” not victims but soldiers—scarred, but still standing.

    Neuroscientist Martin Teicher affirmed her point: childhood abuse alters brain wiring. Adaptive coping mechanisms in childhood turn maladaptive in adulthood, creating an adult mismatched to their world. The traumatized blunt emotion not with a scalpel, but a sledgehammer—shielding themselves from joy as well as pain.

    For Ariel, this explains a life “within brackets.” She sees herself in the patterns Janet Woititz described in Adult Children of Alcoholics: mistrust, emotional volatility, self-loathing, and a skewed sense of normalcy.

    Her chosen remedy: EMDR therapy for PTSD. Nine months of “the light saber”—eyes tracking a green light, headphones delivering sound, memories replayed until they lose their grip. Sessions leave her exhausted. There is progress, measured in patience with Mario’s daughters, in small openings toward joy. But she does not present herself as cured—only as a permanent convalescent.

    Her memoir probes the ethics of trauma. How accountable are the wounded for maladaptive behavior? Can faith or philosophy save them, or does failure deepen self-blame? Are they sinners, soldiers, or something in between?

    Leve’s life raises a tension between two extremes: the nihilist’s surrender—“nothing can be done, so I’ll live recklessly”—and the motivational credo—“discipline and positivity conquer all.” The truth lies somewhere in the messy middle.

  • Scaling the Walls of Forgetting

    Scaling the Walls of Forgetting

    Last night I dreamed I was trapped between two bodies—one fixed at nineteen, the other at sixty-three—and the hands kept swinging me back and forth. Each shift rewired me. My skin would tighten, my mind sharpen, and then in the next instant my knees ached, my thoughts clouded, and the mirror refused to settle on one face.

    In the confusion, I kept losing my keys. Not just keys—wallet, watch, phone. Every few minutes I’d pat my pockets and feel the hollow absence. I lived in a commune that was equal parts office, recording studio, and half-forgotten alumni reunion. The place was enclosed by towering steel walls, the kind that promised protection while making you wonder what you were being kept from.

    We scaled those walls to glimpse the outside world and, somehow, the higher we climbed, the further we could travel through our own memories. But altitude brought obstacles—massive gates stacked one atop another, each locked, each requiring a key.

    I had a locker at the base of the camp with everything I needed: my belongings, my one precious key. And then it was gone, lost to the dream’s careless currents. I cursed myself, replaying the loss in my mind until it stung.

    Kevin, an old friend with a voice like a warm blanket, told me it was fine. Not to worry. That I was okay. Ted, wiry and restless, was already at the top, peering over. He called down, telling us to follow his example, that freedom was just beyond the next barrier.

    Meanwhile, Charlie lounged at the compound’s base, getting his hair trimmed and his shoes polished by a contented employee, as if this walled-in world was good enough.

    The forgetting pressed in on me, thick and airless. Ted’s optimism couldn’t lift me, Kevin’s comfort couldn’t steady me. Without the key, I felt stripped of competence. I teetered there—between the clock faces, between the steel walls—on the edge of hopelessness, afraid that even if I found the lock, I wouldn’t remember what it opened.

  • The Other Place Has QR Codes

    The Other Place Has QR Codes

    Of all the Twilight Zone episodes that have taken up residence in my psyche, none clings more tenaciously than “A Nice Place to Visit.” A petty crook named Rocky Valentine gets gunned down during a botched robbery and wakes up in what appears to be paradise. He’s greeted by Pip, a genial, rotund guide played by Sebastian Cabot, who grants him everything his larcenous heart ever wanted: money, women, luck, luxury. No struggle, no stress. Every desire fulfilled on command.

    At first, Rocky revels in this frictionless dreamscape. It’s Vegas without losing streaks, heaven without requirements. But gradually, pleasure without purpose curdles into a thick, syrupy dread. He realizes that gratification without resistance is just another form of punishment. Bored out of his mind and desperate for meaning, Rocky pleads with Pip to send him “to the other place.”

    Pip laughs and delivers the gut punch: “Heaven? Whatever gave you the idea that you were in Heaven, Mr. Valentine? This is the other place!” And then, with glee, Pip cackles like the well-fed devil he is.

    Which brings me to paid parking.

    There is a hell, and it lives in the infrastructure of modern urban parking. It’s a realm of QR codes, license plate entries, and apps that want your soul—or at least your email and billing zip code. Some kiosks accept coins, others demand smartphone apps, two-step verification, and an MFA code just to stand still without being ticketed. My wife, tech-literate and cool-headed, usually handles this logistical hellscape while I loiter nearby, pretending to study the map of downtown like it’s a sacred text.

    But this week she’s out of town at a teaching convention, and I’m taking our twin daughters to Laguna Beach. This means I have to drive, find a parking structure, and—here’s the true horror—navigate the digital rigmarole of paid parking without her guidance. The thought of it has me sweating harder than Rocky in his silk suit.

    The absurd part? It’s not the traffic, the tides, or the teenagers that unnerve me. It’s the parking meter. The existential shame of standing in front of a digital payment kiosk, poking at it like a confused ape while my daughters wait patiently (or impatiently) beside me. I don’t fear the unknown. I fear looking like an idiot in front of my kids.

    But here’s the deeper, darker realization: this is just a symptom. My wife, through years of effort and mental load, has become the de facto logistics commander of our household. She knows which airport lines move faster. She’s the one strangers approach at terminals, sensing her Jedi-level calm. Meanwhile, I shuffle behind her like an NPC in a bad video game—directionless, frictionless, practically translucent.

    Frictionless living has a cost. It breeds detachment. It robs you of engagement, resilience, and presence. And like Rocky Valentine, I’ve grown too used to being served instead of showing up.

    Ironically, I’m obsessed with watches—those exquisite tools designed to remind you where you are in time. And yet, I’ve spent years drifting, distracted, floating outside the dial. It takes a solo day trip with my daughters—an hour drive, some shopping, a good lunch, and possibly a tantrum or two—to pull me back into the present.

    When my wife heard about my plan, she said, “You don’t know how happy this makes me.” And I believed her. She wasn’t just relieved that I was giving her a break. She was glad to see me step into the friction. To stop spectating and start parenting in real time.

    No, I don’t want to be Rocky. I don’t want a life where every parking spot is perfect, every line is short, and every meal arrives on time. I want the chaos. I want the curveballs. I want the real thing.

    Even if it means downloading the stupid parking app.