“But what am I going to do now?” My niece, aged 4, is bored. Dressed in her finest gold tulle Princess Belle ballgown, she looks up at me with round cheeks and puppy eyes.

We’re on our second episode of Sesame Street after watching the entirety of Mulan and the Farm Animals episode of Ms. Rachel.

“Ree-ree!” the younger niece points to the TV, communicating she’d prefer more of Ms. Rachel instead of Elmo.

I swear we didn’t do screentime all day. We made a picnic with strawberries and blueberries, built castles with kinetic sand, staged lavish vocal performances, played piano, colored both sides of three sheets of paper and had a dance party. DJ Auntie Melanie spun LCD Soundsystem.

I turn my camera off and step away from my laptop to hand the baby a bottle of formula, cold from the fridge. (Did you know you’re supposed to warm the milk up in the microwave? I can’t remember the last time I used a microwave…)

At work we’re playing calendar puzzle, shifting around launch timelines and discussing whether certain terminology is too overloaded to swap in as feature names. Docs team re-platformed and needs a content review. We need to update some messaging on a new product page but I need GitHub permissions for the repo first.

On LinkedIn, it’s happening again. Hundreds of people in my network have been laid off all at once. Green banner. Green banner. Badge photo. Green banner.

“I’m so sorry for your loss,” someone comments on a post written by a new widow. Her husband was laid off a few months ago after 11 years in sales at the same company.

On Nextdoor, the posts all look the same:

Does anyone know an AFFORDABLE summer camp?

Can anyone recommend a CHEAP dentist?

Any part-time jobs hiring?

⚠️ SCAM ALERT ⚠️

PRAYERS FOR DIVINE INTERVENTION 🙏

The baby hands me a colored pencil.

“Crayon,” she says. Close enough.

“Thank you,” I mouth silently, even though my noise-cancelling airpods are on mute.

On X somebody retweets “Bullish on America.”

The US Department of Education has posted an image captioned “SKILLS THAT PAY OFF” depicting two plumbers in blue suits putting together a sink with pipes that lead to nowhere, with tools that also seem to be made out of pipes.

Clickup—a company I recognize solely by their airport ads—is announcing a 22% headcount reduction with new $1M salary bands for survivors who 100x production with AI.

On Bluesky, a professor laments a discouraging conversation with her students:

“overwhelming anxiety,” disappearing career ladders, fake job ads, no safety net, massive uncertainty, desperation

The kids at graduation are boo’ing Eric Schmidt, who looks so old and pale I mistook him for Joe Biden. His shiny gold tassel, bobbing up and down.

It’s a recession but our stocks are up. It’s a gold rush in the middle of a war no one wanted. Gas prices are so high, a man in Atlanta converted a Barbie dream car into street legal transportation.

There’s another shooting. People are dying. People are losing their rights. A woman stepped out of her vehicle into a manhole and died from exposure to steam.

The helpless onlookers were shaken. We are all shaken.

But you have agency. Or, you have to believe you have agency.

You have to take your life in your own hands. If you can dream it, you can build it. You could shape the future. “You could make this place beautiful.”

Outside, it is already beautiful. The forest by the creek is lush and green. The gardenias on the bushes are turning brown but their perfume, like your grandmother at church on Mother’s Day, sticks to the breeze. The sky is the color of charcoal, the same color as the asphalt on the streets which have been darkened by rainfall from a late afternoon storm, one that blew over without flooding the highways.

“I have an idea. Let’s play hide and seek! You go hide!”

“I can’t go hide right now because then there would be nobody to watch your sister. She’s too small to leave alone.”

Some people long for their childhood, a time of no responsibilities. But I’d never go back to being a kid. No money. You can’t drive. You don’t get to decide how you spend your own time.

Do you remember the physical pain of true boredom? Torture.

“AWWWawe,” she whined. “No hide and seek?? What can I play?”

“Well, there are still lots of other games we can play. We can use our imaginations.”

Right now it feels like all the grown ups in the room have forgotten how to use their imaginations. Or, rather, the things they’ve decided to imagine are not things that make life fun for anybody else.

It’s like this: I want to play magical fairy princess kingdom where talking animals give everybody free healthcare and keep the trains running on time… and you want to play “the floor is lava” but the rule is you’re the only one who can stand on the sofa and also what if we build a new data center in space?

I hand you a stuffed poodle to snuggle and you say, “Yea, but what if it was also a snitch-ass robocop?”

Meltdowns ensue.

But whatever you do, don’t be like I was when I was 22, newly graduated into a bad economy. No prospects. A burden to my parents.

I got angry and I stayed angry. I called bullshit on every person who told me I needed to fix my attitude.

The game is rigged. The world is unfair. But I need you to use your imagination and pretend like you’re not personally getting the sea-sponge end of a long wooden shit stick.

You may be unlucky. You may be suffering from circumstances beyond your control. But you are not alone.

And if we just put our heads together I promise we can come up with something to pull us through this fear and hunger and unceasing, torturous boredom.

“Wait! I’ve got an idea. Let’s play I Spy.”