Chapter 2

Basil wakes up at 5 a.m. and needs to be fed. Immediately.

Matthew gets up from bed and puts some wet food in his bowl, with his eyes barely open. The constant meowing feels so overwhelming at this time of day.

He tries to get back to sleep, but can’t. He tosses and turns in bed, but his mind is already focused on work.

“Perhaps I can just start work now and clock out earlier?”, he thinks.

Matthew is still feeling groggy, so he makes some drip coffee to wake him up. He always wakes up a bit nauseous, so coffee is the best he can do for now.

He is not ready for bright lights just yet - the brightness from his laptop screen is just enough.

Matthew slowly sips his coffee while reading his new emails. He is a bit surprised to find any unread emails at all, considering how late he signed off the day prior. But the end of the quarter is always like this - everything is urgent.

After dealing with the last-minute requests, he opens his coding software for his planned tasks. Matthew loves coding, but he hates his job. There’s so much small talk and office politics. Why can’t he just do his job? When Matthew is coding, it is like nothing else exists. He is just completely focused.

Working so early in the morning reminds him of what he likes about his job. Before the messages start to pop up, it’s just him and the prompt.

He stays in this flow state, until a notification startles him. It’s Janet.

The apartment is now already bright, it’s 8 am, and his stomach is grumbling.
“Morning Matthew! How are the slides going?”

“Hi Janet. I actually haven’t started yet - I tried to find your guidelines, but the email you sent me was empty”

“Oops, my bad! I’ll send them to you right now.”

Matthew opens the document and is completely overwhelmed. There are pages and pages with stats that he needs to gather. And the worst part is… he has to present all of this.

He can’t get started on this right away, so he decides to grab some breakfast instead. Drinking coffee on an empty stomach was probably not the best idea. He is feeling jittery. Basil on the other hand is fast asleep.

After a quick breakfast, he tries to start making the slides once again, but he just can’t. He is completely frozen. He looks at the screen, not knowing where to start. Basil rubs on his legs and that gets him out of the trance.

“I can do this”, he whispers to himself. “I just need to get started”.

And so he does. He gathers some stats from the past months. About how much work he has done, how many tickets he has completed, and how the website is doing.

A few hours later, a notification pops on his phone. “WATER PLANTS”

So he takes a break to water the plants around the apartment. There are so many of them. Matthew loves his plants, it’s his personal collection. Watering, pruning, wiping their leaves. Propagating them. It’s meditative.

When he is done, it’s time to get back to work.

He feels sleepy from the early wake, and has to use more coffee to stay on track.

Matthew’s plan to log off earlier is derailed. Once again, it’s 6pm, and he hasn’t eaten anything. He only knows it’s time to get off work because Basil is once again demanding food.

He gives Basil his dinner and this time decides to improvise something for himself. He doesn’t want to risk getting the wrong meal two nights in a row.

After a quick dinner, Matthew spends some time playing with Basil. He uses a wand toy that is Basil’s favorite, and the cat eagerly takes in the attention.

Matthew realizes he hasn’t stepped outside in days. But that’s not gonna happen tonight either. He is too exhausted from the long day of work.

He tries going to bed earlier, but he is still feeling too wired from the caffeine.

So he decides to finish up his slides. He is nearly done either way.

So he gets back to his computer and works for an extra hour.

Matthew is pleased with himself, and forwards the slides to Janet.

He takes a quick shower and goes straight to bed. But of course, he can’t sleep yet. His mind is still in work-mode. He browses social media until it’s too late, and then goes to sleep. But it’s a very agitated night for him - waking up often, and taking a long time to fall asleep again.

At 5am, Basil wakes him up once again to ask for breakfast. Matthew promptly wakes up, gets him his food, and this time manages to fall asleep again.