The quiet hum of the baseboard heater wakes you. You stare at the bare ceiling. Sunlight slices through the bedroom window, casting a thin line of gold across the wooden floor. You swing your legs over the side of the bed and rise carefully, not to wake your wife.

Weigh 20 g of coffee beans on a scale. The glossy, dark-brown beans catch the morning light.

A wave of anxiety hits. It is Monday. It is like any other weekday. The weight in your chest stirs. You have to log in to work from home. You pace back and forth in the living room, trying to be gentle on the wooden floors so they don’t creak.

Spritz the beans with water to diffuse the static in your head. The moisture awakens a raw wooden scent. You clear your throat.

The dread of work creeps in, slow and foul, like mold behind the walls.

What kind of bullshit do you have to deal with at work today? Endless meetings with meaningless corporate jargon, none of which will mention the bank’s recent corruption scandal. You rehearse the conversations you may or may not have out loud. You run through your “action items,” as they call them.

Toss the beans into the grinder. The rattle drowns out the million thoughts running through your mind. The vibration shudders through your fingertips.

You shake your cold, damp hands.

Keep grinding. Keep pacing.

You’re sick of another “deep dive,” or “brain dump,” or a hollow call to “think outside the box.” You tell yourself to “buy in” to the mission to be a “trusted financial partner,” to “meet customer needs,” to “contribute to community well-being.” But the words ring hollow. You can’t even lie to yourself.

The beans settle out into fine grounds.

Transfer the grounds to the portafilter. A deep, smoky scent emerges.

Your boss’s voice echoes from yesterday. He praised you for doing a good job. He said you are “a pioneer in shaping the newly created data specialist role” and “navigated a fast-changing environment with confidence, ingenuity and unwavering commitment. Your problem-solving mindset has become a cornerstone of the team’s success.”

The praise validates you. They gave you appreciation points. You optimize algorithms, shuffle numbers on a screen, and make presentations to clients. Sometimes you can’t even describe what you do, yet you hang on to the hope that it matters.

That you matter.

Deep down, you want more than a pat on the back. You want to build, to touch, to make something visible. The nurses, the teachers, the handymen leave marks on the world. Still, you convince yourself, today will be better than yesterday. Maybe that assurance is enough for today.

Your wife stirs on the bed, reaching for you in her sleep. You know she won’t find you. Stuffed animals litter the bed, and their wide-eyed faces and stitched smiles offer a quiet hope for a future child. You want to return to her side in bed, to the warmth and stillness. You know it will have to wait. Instead, you hold on to the promise of the vacation you have booked in the summer and imagine long walks beneath the neon-lit streets of Tokyo.

Distribute the grounds with a WDT. The shine of metal glints against the dark powder. It’s fine, needles pierce you, but the work is worth the pay and benefits, you remind yourself.

You’re doing this for your family and to save up for a house—a struggle for most millennials these days. The trauma-bonding conversations you have with your co-workers over Teams offer some consolation. You wish you could have lunch with them in person, even if it were just once a week. Instead, they are featureless blank squares on your screen. Disembodied voices.

At least they are there.

You head into the bathroom. You brush your teeth and allow the electric toothbrush to buzz over your molars in a calming rhythm. You step into the shower and let the water run over your back and dampen your hair.

For a moment, your mind clears. You try to hold onto that stillness, but it eludes you like water slipping through your cupped hands. You dry yourself with a towel, pull on a sweater and boxers.

Your stomach knots. You lose your appetite.

You pace around some more.

In a parallel universe, you’d hand in your resignation, give a piece of your mind to the boss, and then travel the world. Maybe you’d like to open a little café by the corner of the street and have long conversations with patrons about the finer points of single-origin beans versus blends.

But not today.

Tamp down the grounds into the portafilter. The walls close in on you. The pressure increases. You know it is time to log in to work.

You remember your therapist said to give yourself a time limit to make a decision. So, a few months ago, you applied for other jobs. You even received some interviews. But none of them seemed good enough or paid well enough or meaningful enough. Will you ever be more than an office drone? What if the next job is worse? Was this the life you wanted?

Turn the portafilter’s handle toward the right. It clicks into place.

The first golden-brown threads appear. Mechanical whirring and drip, steady as a metronome. The liquid climbs higher around you. You thrash, keeping your head above the surface. The steam curls and bites at your skin.

Pull the shot in thirty seconds.

You inhale the velvety chocolate and earthy aroma. You sit down in front of the L-shaped desk on the ergonomic chair your wife got you for Christmas. You take a sip. The sharp, bittersweet taste lingers on the tongue.

You begin to code.