Maintenance Required
The body keeps its own count
Five pills at lunch. Five at dinner.
Chiropractor on Tuesday and again on Thursday.
This is the routine now. Month 14.
The fiber is for cholesterol. Flagged at month ten. The adjustments are for text neck and posture. The economy-seat curve, the laptop hunch, the shape of someone who spends too much time bracing.
I’m in my 40s. Some of this is just time doing what time does.
Not all of it.
At month eight, I changed teams. Made a doctor’s appointment the same week. First one in two years, new patient intake, two months out.
By the time they measured me, the situation had changed. The body hadn’t.
So now I count pills before meals and adjustments that leave me in pain at my desk, shifting in my chair, trying to find a position that doesn’t ache.
The doctor said move more. The walk from the garage to the office is what moving looks like now.
I don’t know how to separate what the corridor costs from what stress costs from what age costs. The body doesn’t provide a breakdown.
It just tells me what it needs to keep going.
Five pills. Twice a day. Adjustments. Twice a week.
The math says continue.
The Checkup
Before the vitals, there was a depression screening. Ten questions about mood, sleep, energy.
I answered honestly, some in the middle of the range.
The nurse took height and weight first. The number looked lower than the last time anyone measured me.
She wrapped the cuff around my arm. Pumped. Waited. Watched the numbers settle.
126 over 78.
She wrote it down without comment. Elevated. Not emergency. Just higher than it should be.
Then the doctor came in, reviewed the chart, and asked the screening questions again. Third time through the same questions.
I don’t know if that’s standard protocol. I don’t know if something in my answers triggered the repetition. I didn’t ask.
He moved on to stress, sleep, and exercise.
I nodded.
The blood work came back the next day at my desk in Seattle.
Total cholesterol: 243. Flagged.
LDL: 163. Flagged.
Triglycerides: 161. Borderline.
HDL: 51. Low end of normal.
The numbers weren’t catastrophic. They were warning signs.
The doctor didn’t tell me to take it easy. He told me to take fiber, manage stress, move more, buy a blood pressure cuff to monitor at home, and come back in a year.
I added the numbers to a new spreadsheet. Blood pressure, cholesterol, and a note about posture after the height on the wall. A new tab, next to the one tracking the ratio.
The body was filing a report. I started reading it.
Monday Night
The studio is 300 square feet. Furnished for short-term travel nurses. A bed, a desk, a kitchenette, a couch. I bought a small treadmill. It takes up whatever space was left. I haven’t used it in a while.
Monday nights are the hardest. The flight lands, I drive back, and unlock a door to a room that’s been empty since Friday. The air is cold. Nothing has moved. I put my bag down in the same spot, the same way, every week.
Paper plates and plastic utensils. A microwave, a fridge, a countertop oven. Frozen meals and peanut butter sandwiches. A bathroom where the shower is just wide enough to turn around in. A heater but no air conditioning.
It was enough. It has always been enough.
The Morning
The cuff says 128 over 80 this morning. Higher than the doctor’s office. I write it down, same spreadsheet, and pick up my phone.
I open the browser and type the ticker. The result loads. My chest tightens in the half-second before the number appears. Every time.
Down.
The breath releases. The tightness stays. I’m still staring at the screen, coffee getting cold, running math I’ve already run.
Last spring, the stock dropped and I watched my ratio compress toward Caution. I could feel the walls getting closer. It recovered. The feeling didn’t.
Year 1, there was a cushion. Cash up front while the stock vested. A buffer wide enough that a drop didn’t matter.
Year 2, the cushion is smaller.
Year 3, it’s gone. The cash disappears and the equity becomes most of my compensation. The stock price will matter more than it ever has, and I’ll have nothing absorbing the fall.
That’s next year.
I close the page. Open it again ten minutes later.
The number hasn’t changed. I knew it wouldn’t. I check anyway.
I read the news looking for signals. The analysis contradicts itself. I read it anyway. I don’t know what I’m looking for. Control, maybe.
I can’t.
Two screens now. The cuff and the stock ticker. One tells me if the body still works. The other tells me if the math still works.
I check both every morning.
The Truck
The 2012 Toyota I drove up from Phoenix. I haven’t washed it once. It’s always raining or just finished.
Twenty-five minutes in morning traffic. There’s a hill at a freeway meter where I stop and wait for the light. Every morning the back wheels slip on the wet start. Every morning I brace for it. The body knows the spot before the tires do.
I park in an underground lot a few blocks from the office and walk the rest. It’s cold. It’s always cold.
The Building
Uphill to the office, surrounded by the same surge of tech workers. Same look. Same cadence. I’m lost in it.
The badge taps with a beep, a green light, and the turnstile releases. It feels like a timestamp. Something shifts on the other side. The body enters a space where it’s being measured.
The floor is empty when I arrive. I’m always the first one in. Large Americano, no room. It’s always boiling hot. Faint coffee stains on my pants that won’t come out anymore.
I sit down at my desk. The ergonomics aren’t right. My back slouches into the same position the chiropractor corrected two days ago. I raise the desk to standing. The body shifts its weight for an hour, then gives up. Back to sitting. Back to the slouch. The body just settles into the shape the desk gives it.
Windows face out to grey. The sound of streetcar bells. I eat at my desk. The same food truck, the same meal, every day.
The meetings start mid-morning. Results and accountability. Tensions rise. That’s the way they usually go. The same rooms, the same screens, the same faces on video tiles from other offices. I sit in chairs that aren’t mine either. By noon my lower back is a fist.
The afternoon is the longest. The floor fills up, gets loud, then starts to thin. I watch the light in the windows shift from grey to darker grey. The coffee is gone. The body wants to move. It stays in the chair.
Afternoon mocha latte from the bean-to-cup machine. Questionable if it’s real coffee. The body doesn’t care. It needs the second hit.
By five the hallway conversations fade. By six the kitchen is empty. By seven I can hear the cleaning crew two floors down. The building hollows out around me while I’m still in it.
Twelve hours, Monday through Thursday. The others come in later. They leave earlier. By the time the floor empties I’m still at my desk. The body gets hungry late. I walk the empty hallways looking for snacks in the surrounding offices. Granola bars, bags of chips, candy. Whatever’s left.
First in. Last out. The building gives me the ratio and takes the hours.
The Night
Late nights the drive back takes ten minutes. No traffic. Empty roads, wet pavement, the headlights catching rain. The studio is dark when I get there.
The bed is fine. Firm enough. Not mine.
Some nights sleep comes. Some nights I’m staring at the ceiling running the stock, the ratio, whether Year 3 holds. The body is tired. The mind won’t stop calculating.
By 6am the footsteps start upstairs. The landlord’s morning. Then mine. The body gets up whether it slept or not. Pills. Counter. Drive to the office, park, and walk the rest. It’s hilly.
The Cuts
This month, they cut several thousand people.
Slack channels passing around the WARN letter. Entire teams disappearing in org announcements. People I met with on Monday, gone by Thursday.
The hallway talk is about 3am. That’s when the emails come. I know because I’ve been checking. Not every night. But more nights than I want to admit. The phone glows in the dark. My stomach drops before I’ve even opened the inbox. Most nights, nothing. I put the phone down. I don’t go back to sleep.
I don’t know if I was ever on a list. I just know I’m still here, and they’re not.
The ratio assumes I still have the job. There’s no alert for that. No threshold. Just the phone in the dark and the half-second before the inbox loads.
Two Reports
Friday I’m in a window seat somewhere over Nevada. The adjustment from Thursday still aches. Economy seat, laptop open, the same hunch the chiropractor straightens twice a week. By the time I land it will have set again.
My son is fifteen months old. He’s learning words I hear through the phone. My stepdaughter has a new recipe picked out for the weekend. My fiancée sends a photo of both of them. I look at it from the air.
Two tabs now. Two reports.
The first tracks the ratio. I open it the way I check the cuff and the stock price. The ratio doesn’t hit the same way the stock price does. It moves slower. Monthly, not daily. But when I open the tab I hold my breath the same way. The number is still where it was. Travel costs came down. The lease held. The ratio held.
The second tracks the body. Blood pressure, cholesterol, posture. A tab that didn’t exist twelve months ago.
The first tells me whether to continue. The second tells me what continuing costs.
They don’t talk to each other. No formula combines them. No threshold where one overrides the other. I don’t know how sore is too sore. How many pills is too many.
The model says viable. The body says maintenance required.
The math says continue. The body is filing a different report.
Next week: the cabin. How many others are running this calculation, and who the math leaves behind.
The documentation continues.
If you’re in the trap too, I’d rather hear from you directly: hello@1100mileworkday.com
Disclaimer: I’m documenting this in real-time, with the understanding that the math working doesn’t mean it’s working. These are not recommendations. They’re field notes from an unsustainable arrangement that shouldn’t have to exist. The content in this newsletter reflects one person’s experience and should not be construed as financial, tax, legal, or career advice. Individual circumstances vary significantly. Consult qualified professionals before making decisions affecting your employment, taxes, or family situation. The author is not a financial advisor, attorney, or tax professional.