I check my likes once more (forty-two, I should really kill myself) and start to write.

I stop typing every two minutes or so and let my thumb and thoughts zip round in a fast, looping flight. This, this, this, this. Back to work for a few sentences. Back round again. This, this, this. My head teems.

This is how I think:

I am doing what I should be doing: writing. Oh that’s quite good. I can do a good sentence when I put my mind to it – no wait, it’s terrible, why am I so terrible? Am I so terrible because of that time I kissed my male friend even though I was in a relationship because I have no way of separating platonic heterosexual friendship from groundwork for a sexual encounter? Oh, there’s something about politics! I should know more about politics. I will like it so that people think I know about politics. Or am I so terrible because I once tweeted a line of my own poetry after I’d been up all night and someone replied: Pull your head out your ass once in a while, and it was the brother of someone I once dated. No I am terrible because someone once commented on a column – apropos of nothing – YOU HAVE NO INTEGRITY. I am obsessed with whoever wrote that. How dare they be so right about me. It was the top comment, too, so it lives forever as the first thing you see beneath the piece – I can’t believe it can’t be removed on legal grounds. Ugh, this woman with the self-care haikus is awful. Her podcast is no. 2 in the charts. I should do a podcast. But what would my podcast be about? Maybe politics. Maybe politics for people who know nothing about politics. Like me. I am A WOMAN OF THE PEOPLE. I just need to find the time. I don’t know how people find the time to do podcasts. I can’t even find the time to finish this senten—

My phone pings with a message. I pounce on it.

It’s one of my lodgers. Sid.

Hey have you seen the half avocado that was in the fridge? x

She sends me daily micro-aggressions like this.

I reply:

Yes I ate it for breakfast, thought it would be okay as you ate half my sourdough last week x

That wasn’t me, that was Jonah, as you know I am gluten free x

He was staying in your room for the night tho x

He is his own person, why am I accountable for his actions? x

Fine, I’ll buy you another avocado. A whole one x

Not much good to me right now is it? Not to worry! Thank you, I do appreciate you replacing it x