paranoia and unreality

My phone has stopped ringing for calls. Instead it just purrs at me. It’s very annoying; I’m worried that I’ll miss an important work call because of it. I don’t know what the problem is. I double-checked all the settings. It’s set to ring and not vibrate. The ring volume is set to high (when I tap to test it, the ringtone is loud and clear). I don’t have “Do Not Disturb” on during the workday. Other sounds play just fine. In fact, one time I missed a call from my boss, so she texted “Call me” and I heard the notification sound and was able to call back immediately.

Anyway, Thursday afternoon, there was a purring in my pocket. I pulled out my cell phone and it was a call from Jordan. He said the boss gave us Friday off. Thanks, boss! (I had a moment of wildly irrational paranoia in which I thought, what if the boss didn’t give us Friday off and Jordan is deliberately sabotaging my work performance? Silly thought. After a while I realized it was the Fourth of July weekend, so giving us an extra long weekend makes sense.)

I had an odd moment of unreality today when I got up to drink a glass of water. The warm summer sun was streaming through the condo window, and I thought: what if this life is just a dream? It seems unrealistically good. Maybe I’m actually slumped on the floor somewhere in squalor, like that one Sharin character in her bad ending, a complete wastrel surrounded by candy wrappers and food debris. Maybe I’ll wake up someday and everything I have will be gone.

(But you should still focus on shoring up what you have while the dream lasts, yes?)