In the Offing

Bay Window

 

On my bay window, watching the sea in the unseasonably warm May air. The sky is a pale, pixelated blue, a stubborn act of life in a world that feels increasingly synthetic.

It’s so easy, to let habit become fact. To let the algorithm dictate the energy flows. To settle into the way things have always been, even if it no longer feels in balance. That’s what the first half of this decade has been about. It’s easy for this to happen, especially when you’ve been waxing and waning on the needs of day-to-day—emails that breed like rabbits, the endless two-factor authentications, the pressure to “optimize” every waking hour. The bills in the inbox, the dishes on the counter, the laundry in the machine, and still your thoughts gravitate to alone-time, a commodity in critically short supply.

When it takes all, to not scream with weariness—the kind that’s seeped into your marrow, the kind that nine out of ten workers now report feeling, drained by unclear priorities and the relentless pace of change. Burnout has become the background radiation of modern life, up 65% year-over-year, a quiet epidemic.

Too much happened. I fell in and out of love in several layers—with people, with ideas of myself, with the very concept of productivity. I wrote and published a book and working on a new one. It’s endless edits. Nirvaan will be soon graduating high school, and every morning I break my heart seeing my once tiny baby now almost a young adult, findmy the only  digital tether that soothes and suffocates in equal measure.

I am making some bold moves—deliberately choosing the “analog” in an increasingly digital world. I chastised myself on every other occasion for not being “on” enough. I finally caught fine lines, and an immense amount of grey, and a new kind of fatigue that sleep doesn’t fix. Projects that felt like a metaphor for my own interior life, everything torn apart before it could be put back together. Plans to meet friends over business trips, and in the space of regimented schedules and pencilling in dates, months in advance. Kept the painkillers industry going single-handedly.

Thinking details. Planning big. Rolling my thoughts around like pebbles in a box—only now the box is also a notification center, a news feed, a to-do list that regenerates itself. I threw them on the board and I still don’t see a pattern. Or a picture. I feel like 60 and 16 at the same time. Shattered and resurrected by the same things. The world makes me claustrophobic—with its AI-generated art and its hustle-culture hangover—and I deliberately lose myself inside, lest I forget to breathe, forget to feel, to listen.

But something is shifting. You can feel it in the rise of JOMO—the joy of missing out—a quiet revolution against the tyranny of FOMO. The 2026 zeitgeist is about refusing to tolerate what drains us. It’s a mindset shift from achievement to alignment. It’s in the young people ditching fluorescent-lit offices for the honest fatigue of trade work, choosing “less stress, more stable” as their mantra. It’s the rediscovery that rest isn’t a competition, and healing doesn’t need to be a KPI.

It’s harder to bring attention to breath and pulse and heart when the whole world is screaming for your attention. But maybe that’s the only work that matters now.

The deep, tectonic shift of something real. About to happen.

Copyright©Neer

Thin Film Interference Kinda Day

A long weekend with no plans, is a thing of beauty. Do you agree?

I spent today doing nothing with my teen. Best day in months.

We talked in half-finished thoughts, picking up from the night before or three years ago. Sexuality, matter-of-fact, no performance of being cool. Morality and then Nihilism made its appearance; he’s trying it on like a jacket, seeing if it fits. Then somehow India, the US, China: the stories nations tell themselves that no one outside believes, same as people. Wasn’t a discourse, just circling, curious. Of course quantum physics had to have a say. He hyperboles, I rationalise. He pushes his boundaries, I am elastic. We’re perfectly matched.

He told me about what he wants, in fragments — a scene to direct, a place to live, a self still in pencil. I mostly just listen, sometimes stratgize, sometimes mother, most times just a sounding board. Then he roasts me: my height, a phrase I overuse, my “pauses and British phrases.” Being trolled by someone I made is one of the great pleasures.

We went to the theatre for The Sheep Detectives — the Hugh Jackman one, with the flock that turns Poirot after their shepherd is found dead. It shouldn’t work. A murder mystery solved by sheep, voiced by Patrick Stewart and Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Bryan Cranston, adapted by the Chernobyl writer from a German novel called Three Bags Full. The writing, somehow tender. The sheep grieve. The shepherd is mourned. The whodunit creaks along on hoofs and there is, against my better judgement, a lump in my throat by the third act. We laughed at the wrong places. We couldn’t rewind, which felt right — some things you only get once, even the ridiculous ones. That, too, is a love language. Reminded me of the years when all I watched was all the animation and was all updates on the lore of my little pony

Evening, down to the waterfront. The sky showed off — rainbow of non primary colours, where it had no business being, lavender, a painted teal. The water doubled it. We shared earbuds: Pink Floyd, his music taste is eclectic and I couldn’t be prouder, the notes hit as the clouds broke and I came a little undone. He notices, sometimes says nothing.

Home before dark. Low jazz. Opposite ends of the couch, feet tangled like when he was small. I made a good chilli margarita — salt, smoke, slow burn. Wrote a scene I’d been avoiding, got it in one take. Crediting the day, not the tequila. Or maybe the tequila too.

Nothing happened. No milestones, only a few photos. Just a long conversation with the person I most like talking to, broken up by a ridiculous show, a gorgeous sky, a drink that bites back. Nobody tells you that one day your kid becomes the company you’d choose. Doing nothing with the right person is its own devotion. I’ll take all of it, especially the trolling.

Copyright©Neer