White sweat bled through my fatigues like my body was trying to escape without filing the paperwork. Salt clawed its way out of my boots in little white surrender flags. My skin had turned into a war zone of heat bumps, each one screaming its own tiny obscenity. My eyes shrank to slits, twitching and electric, like a lab rat that just discovered God and found out God owed it money.
That is how a bad day introduces itself. It does not knock. It kicks in the door and urinates on your sense of dignity.
Still, it could be worse. You could wake up naked in the desert with a rattlesnake wrapped around your leg like a clingy ex, both of you wondering who made the worse decision last night. You sit there bargaining with the universe, promising to become a better man, a quieter man, a man who never again trusts tequila or optimism.
Do you feel it. That low voltage panic humming under the ribs.
I ask myself why I do not drink more. Then I remember the mornings that felt like my soul had been used as a rental car and returned without the tires. The devil’s nectar is a charming liar. It buys you confidence on credit and collects in blood.
Which brings me to LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is that drink.
It looks clean. Professional. Respectable. It wears a tie and smiles too much. Then you wake up the next morning naked in the psychological desert, your self respect missing, and some stranger is yelling at you about personal branding and synergy like they just discovered fire and want credit for the sun.
I tried. God help me, I tried.
I sat there while a barista with a PhD handed me coffee with the emotional range of a funeral director, and I realized we were both casualties of the same cosmic clerical error. This poor bastard spent ten years studying the secrets of the universe just to foam milk for men like me who spent ten years breaking computers on purpose.
We were two survivors of different shipwrecks, clinging to the same floating door.
I stared into that cup like it might confess something.
But LinkedIn is not coffee. It is middle school with mortgages.
It is a hallway packed with overgrown adolescents screaming Look at me while pretending they do not care if you look. Every post is a confession disguised as a victory lap. Every smiling headshot hides the silent scream of a man refreshing his own relevance.
And there I was. Born in the machine. Raised on blinking cursors and smoke detector chirps. A feral child of information technology. I learned to speak fluent system failure before I learned to trust anyone wearing a suit.
So I asked the question.
Is this thing on.
Or is that noise the sound of people leaving.
Either way, LinkedIn feels like that snake.
Coiled.
Watching.
Waiting to see if you are stupid enough to believe it loves you.
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