found one of my old cricket notebooks in a photo aai sent while clearing a cupboard. entire pages of averages written by hand, with headings in different colours, because apparently ten-year-old me already needed a dashboard. the funny part is that i remember a particular innings as brilliant even though the numbers beside it are fairly ordinary. must have been who i watched it with, or how close the match was. now i'm wondering how many of my very confident opinions are just afternoons i liked with statistics added later. flatmate says all of them, which is a strong claim from someone whose analysis begins and ends with his favourite player.

woke up with my neck stuck at the exact angle required to look at my monitor, very convenient if i planned to do nothing else. turning towards my flatmate at breakfast meant turning my whole chair. last night i was debugging on the laptop in bed because apparently the cheap desk chair was not doing enough damage on its own. after walking downstairs and back it eased a little, but the tight bit returned during the first call. i kept looking at my own video to see whether i was sitting straight, which is a fairly stupid additional reason to stare at a screen. moved the laptop onto a stack of books. now the camera sees my face instead of my ceiling, at least.

a college friend told me his new salary and i did the correct supportive noises while immediately calculating the difference. i hate that i did that. he worked hard for the switch and wasn't even showing off, he was explaining why he could finally help his parents move. i was happy for that part, properly happy, then came home feeling behind at something i hadn't agreed was a race. my flatmates were watching cricket and i joined them but barely followed the over. kept wanting to mention the salary, as if they could give me a verdict on whether my life was still acceptable. didn't mention it. not sure that counts as handling it, but at least i didn't make it his problem.