The cursor is a rhythmic, mocking heartbeat against the white expanse of an empty Asana board. Mark’s index finger twitches, a micro-spasm he hasn’t noticed yet, as he drags a task titled ‘Synergistic Q4 Strategy’ into the ‘In Progress’ column. It is 3:44 PM. The light from his 24-inch monitor is carving canyons into his retinas, but he doesn’t blink. He can’t. He is currently riding the peak of his 4th cold brew of the afternoon, a liquid battery that is doing a lot of heavy lifting for a nervous system that hasn’t seen a full 4 hours of restorative sleep in at least 14 days. He feels a strange sense of accomplishment. The board is color-coded. The labels are pristine. The software is perfectly optimized. The person operating it, however, is vibrating at a frequency that suggests an imminent mechanical failure.

I’m sitting across from him in this glass-walled fishbowl of an office, nursing a scoop of peppermint ice cream that I really shouldn’t have bought. I just took a massive bite, and the resulting brain freeze is currently 4 times more intense than I expected. A sharp, crystalline spike of pain is radiating from the roof of my mouth to the back of my skull. It’s a grounding sensation.