what you do when no one’s watching

We’ve got this new office at work, and I’ve been having this intrusive thought lately.

Every time I go to the loo, just before I flush, I picture one of my AirPods slipping out of my ear and dropping into the bowl. There’s nothing dramatic about it, there’s no panic in it. Just this precise point of sadness and failure. This clean, white object that Jony Ive probably spent 10 years designing, entering a space that instantly changes what it is.

My brain has definitely clocked that this is worth rehearsing. Every single bloody time, like it’s part of the process. Simulate the minor catastrophe. Wash hands. Check the mirror.

You know what the strangest thing is? The scenario itself isn’t the point anymore.

It’s the decision that follows. That’s the bit I’ve been thinking about a lot. Because the moment it drops, the universe splits. Two versions appear, and one of them is about to become real. In one version, clearly, you leave it. You flush it, walk away. Dignity intact. You tell yourself it’s okay, because things fall into places they shouldn’t, and sometimes you don’t get them back.

In the other, you go all in. Definitely not heroically. Perhaps not even reluctantly. Just with a short pause, like, “here we go” long enough to register what you’re about to do.

And that’s it. And there’s a big difference between the two.

There’s no secret skill to it. Just a decision so insignificant it barely qualifies as one, for me, it rearranges something fundamental. Once you’ve gone in, you’ve crossed a line.

You can wash your hands of it afterwards. That part is easy. But the ego has already made a note. It’s that internal audit trail we all have, this sense that nothing we do, however small, is actually going unrecorded. What’s interesting is that we insist on running scenarios like this. Not success. Not stability. Not all the other times nothing happens.

Just this thing… it’s like we have some internal system that is constantly asking:

When it comes to it, what do you actually do?

When the cost is low enough to ignore publicly, but high enough to feel privately. Because I think that’s where most of life sits.

Not in the obviously big and generic, cinematic decisions we like to imagine define us, but in these fucked, unobserved negotiations. Moments where no one is watching, and nothing truly irreversible is at stake—but something still gets momentarily revealed.

The brain doesn’t often rehearse glory, unless you’re a psycho.

Let’s be real, it’s rarely a monetary equation, what I’m talking about underneath all of this.

Anyway, I’m cracking up at the idea that the version of me who reaches in is more real than the one who doesn’t. More honest? Maybe.

As I’ve got older I’ve gotten less and less attached to the idea of dignity as something fixed and clean, and more aware that it’s flexible. Kinda situational. Easily negotiated away for the right price. So now, every time I stand there, just before I flush, I run it again. Not to prevent it, I know it’s gonna happen one day.

Just to check that the line is still where I think it is. And to see how little it would take, on a random day for me to cross it.

That said, I was never about to give up tunes on the loo any time soon.

Ta ra.