Rent, Debt, and a Spine That Aches Before Noon

You know you're getting older when your back hurts from doing absolutely nothing heroic. Not from moving furniture, not from saving a cat, not even from fighting crime in the dead of night. Just… sleeping. On a mattress I once called “perfectly fine,” which now feels more like a slow punishment for every decision I’ve made in the past five years.

Time is moving...I can feel it, almost physically. In the joints, in the inbox, in the way my body negotiates with me after a long day like we’re two separate people with very different ideas of what’s reasonable. I used to think aging was some abstract, far-off concept. Something you recognized in your parents or in distant, grainy future versions of yourself. Now it feels closer. Personal. Something I carry around in my lower back and in the way I think about money when I’m brushing my teeth.

I’ve hit that strange phase of life where I have the things I used to chase a job, a car, an alarm clock that wakes me up for both and yet I’m starting to ask different questions. Not dramatic ones like “What is the meaning of life?” but more subtle, nagging ones like: Is this what it looks like when life just keeps going?

Lately, I’ve found myself dodging notifications. Not out of rebellion, but fatigue. The Teams pings, the endless emails, the calls that feel like they only exist to justify a calendar slot. It’s ironic, as someone who grew up with phones practically glued to their hand, but now I find myself resenting that screen. Not because of who’s on the other end but because of what it represents: more input. More demand. More noise. I, a Gen Z raised on rapid replies, now subtly stop checking my phone not as an act of defiance, but as a quiet form of self-preservation.

I’m not ungrateful. I don’t hate my job. In fact, some days I even enjoy the structure. There’s something oddly comforting about having a role to play, a rhythm to follow. But there’s also this undercurrent—like I’ve wandered into a life I’m technically supposed to be living, but keep waiting for someone to tell me what it’s all for.

The rent is due. The car debt sits there like a passive-aggressive roommate, reminding me I don’t really own what I drive. And maybe that’s why I’ve started thinking more seriously about ownership—not just of objects, but of time. I want to buy assets. Grow my net worth. Have something that doesn’t depreciate the moment I look at it too long. I still dream of traveling and seeing the world. Maybe I’ll go back to Bangkok, where everything felt chaotic and alive in a way this structured, optimized life doesn’t.

Even dating has changed. I’m at the point where I have to date for the actual sake of dating. Not for dopamine, not for drama just to genuinely get to know someone. Which, in this modern ecosystem, feels borderline radical. Today’s romantic marketplace is some kind of Olympic sport where the only medal is a body count, and self-diagnosed Daddy issues are worn like edgy badges of intellectual depth right next to “I listen to indie music too, hence I’m different.” The irony writes itself.

Still, I do the work. I show up. I pay what I owe. But I’m learning to listen more. To the quiet voice that says: Maybe there’s more than this. Maybe life isn’t supposed to feel like a checklist of payments and polite professional replies. Maybe there’s something else...something mine I haven't built yet.

And maybe, just maybe, this dull little backache is the first honest signal that I’m outgrowing a life I haven’t even finished living.