For a while that was paradise. Then comfortable. Then just normal.
I lost my shit at a checkout counter in Lisbon because the card reader took too long.
Not lost my shit like I yelled at anyone. Lost my shit like I stood there sighing, jaw tight, tapping my fingers on the counter while an old woman in front of me dug through her purse for coins. Fifteen seconds. Maybe twenty. And I felt something close to rage.
Over nothing.
That's when I knew something had broken in me. Not the obvious kind of broken. The kind that sneaks in dressed as a good life.
I spent a decade running a logistics company where nothing went smoothly. Trucks broke down at 4am. Clients rewrote orders after we'd already loaded them. Employees no-showed on the busiest days. Friction was the whole job. Twelve things went wrong before lunch and I dealt with every single one of them because that's what the day required.
When I sold the company and rebuilt everything, I designed friction out. No employees. No office. No schedule. No meetings. Three product streams that mostly run themselves. Check the dashboards, answer some messages, done by mid-morning. The rest of the day is mine.
For a while that was paradise. Then comfortable. Then just normal.
Then, so slowly I didn't notice, I became someone who couldn't handle a single thing going sideways.
That's the trap. You remove every source of friction from your life and your tolerance for friction drops to zero. You don't get more peaceful. You get more fragile.
You know this one even if you haven't named it yet. Maybe you redesigned your morning so perfectly that one interruption, a neighbor's dog barking, a text that comes at the wrong time, throws off your whole day. Maybe you got so used to working alone that a single unexpected phone call leaves you drained for hours. Maybe you built a life where nothing is hard and now everything feels hard.
Fourteen guys used to work in my warehouse. At least three of them were actively trying to get fired at any given time. I handled it. Handled all of it. Now a slow wifi connection makes my pulse spike. A barista getting my order wrong can ruin an hour.
A buddy back home has two kids under five. His house is controlled chaos every waking minute. Someone is always screaming or spilling something or refusing to wear shoes. He hasn't slept past 6am in three years. Last time we talked he told me about his Saturday. Soccer practice, grocery run, kid had a meltdown in Target, wife was working late, he made dinner with a toddler hanging off his leg.
He sounded tired. He didn't sound fragile.
His life has friction built into the walls. Every day something goes wrong and he handles it and moves on and doesn't think about it again. His tolerance stays high because he's getting reps. Daily.
My days are smooth by design. And smooth, it turns out, is just another word for untested.
Noticed it in the water too. I used to paddle out in messy conditions without a second thought. Choppy, crowded, current pulling sideways. Didn't matter. Now if the break isn't clean I catch myself almost talking myself out of going. Got so used to picking only perfect sessions that anything less feels like a waste of time.
My mom raised nine kids in a three-bedroom house with one bathroom and never enough of anything. Every day of her life was friction. I never once saw her spiral over something small. She didn't have the luxury. There was no smooth, perfectly controlled version of her day available to her. So she built the muscle for handling whatever showed up, and she kept it strong her entire life.
That muscle is the one I've been letting atrophy.
Going back to seventy-hour weeks and warehouse chaos isn't the answer. I know that. But I've started doing small, stupid things that put resistance back in my days. Taking the bus instead of a cab. Going to the crowded market instead of ordering delivery. Saying yes to plans I can't control. Dinner with people I just met, at a time I didn't pick, at a place I've never been.
It sounds ridiculous. A grown man practicing being slightly inconvenienced. But that's where I am. That's what too much comfort actually costs. Not your edge. Not your ambition. Your ability to be a normal person in a world that doesn't arrange itself around you.
I stood in that checkout line watching an old woman count her coins and I wanted to scream. The only person in that story with a problem was me.
— Best, Jose
