Reflection

The mirror reported that Shawn had checked the "scraggly and unkempt" box at some point this week; he resisted the urge to smell his pajamas for fear they would report an ongoing failure to do even the most basic of household chores. Shawn's reflection was giving him "Old Man and the Sea"; although he was not in any kind of Hemingway era, it resonated (the past was the past, the present was meh, the future demanded he prove himself). "All of that's very dramatic," he mused quietly, "and kind of seductive in a way, but I'm not so easily convinced we get only one shot. I'm more of a "Middlemarch" (Eliot) man - striving for consistency in turmoil." It would take Shawn almost a bucket of coffee to face his day, but face it he would; he would do his best and read at lunch (grateful for the habit, for books had saved his sanity more than once).