It’s 9:09 pm. The kids are quiet. I would love to lounge in bed and Netflix and chill with Mr. D, the cat, and a bong hit or three. But I’m still on edge, buzzing with anxious energy from the giant little thing that made up a bad day.

Now it’s 9:12 and the little one is at my door, screaming like crazy. Oh, bedtime. I always feel like I’m fucking this one up.

I’m basically live tweeting (without Twitter) my stoned thoughts.

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Now it’s 9:23. I think the kids might be down for the count, and I finally know what I’m going to write. It comes from the graph above.

Now it’s 9:30 and I just went back and edited the graph 20 times. Ugh. I’m basically live tweeting (without Twitter) my writing process.

Alright… now it’s 9:32, and I’m going to attempt to write something smart:

A few weeks back, Mr. D discovered a funny thing when texting on an iPhone. (You might already know this exists, but this was news to me, as I’m also notoriously oblivious to everything. Anyway… he discovered that the phone doesn’t just autocorrect words you’re in the process of typing, but it can also predict the next word you’re about to say. I’m guessing it does this by some sort of A.I. word cloud that assesses your vocabulary and speech pattern). I say that because here’s our text exchange from yesterday morning:

(If that’s hard to read, the main exchange says:

Mr. D: I love you so much fun and addicting but it is a great day to be a good day to be a great day to be

Me: Love the D and the rest of the year and I don’t think that I have a great way for a few years back

Mr. D: It’s so funny. Do you have a sec to talk?

Do you get what’s funny? I didn’t until Mr. D called me to say the tone of our predictive texts reflects my pessimism to his optimism (though I don’t fully agree with this assessment).

Anyway, today… I had much to be happy about:

• I killed an important presentation.
• I handled a bullshit performance appraisal with my boss with grace and humility, and I told her that I see her criticisms as opportunities for growth (which I do).
• I got an email from a headhunter asking me to consider applying for a director position at a larger institution. Not sure how this happened, but that’s more flattering than time the hottest guy in 6^th grade flirted with me at a bar in my 20s.

But. I chose instead to be pissed off and resentful. Like when I told Mr. D all my good news, I ended with the one thing that really grinds my gears. This thing—one word from my performance appraisal—was a monster in the pit of my belly, and it was hungry.

I bitched about it to a girlfriend, and it grew. I thought about it while driving home, and it grew. And when Mr. D kissed me and congratulated me about my day, I fed it some more, and didn’t even notice the colossal-sized delusions of grandeur to which it had grown.

In fact, it wasn’t until after my bong hit that I finally felt its weight inside of me. It was so heavy and depleting. It fed off my anger and drained me of joy.

And then I farted. Long and deep. In a way that would make my fat grandma proud. I was like Martha Stewart after getting fired by the Griffins.

By then it was bedtime, and I realized I could turn this into a message for my girls.

(This is not the message, but my friend Enrique’s other universal truth is that “All men are dumb, and all women are crazy.” I believe it. I was having this little epiphany–which I’ll get to soon, I swear–right as the kids were losing their minds. Big A was whining over some bullshit; Little A was screaming like a tyrant. But I was high and stress-free and began to see things, finally, in a “good day to be a great day” light.)

Anyway, I told my kids about my epiphany: It physically hurts—your mind actually wears you down and destroys your body—when you hold onto the things that make you angry.

I wanted the kids to hear me because they need to hear this message just as much as I do. Of course, they’re 3 and 5, and I’m 32, but whatever. Age ain’t nothing but a number (RIP, Aaliyah.) (Also, thank you for spelling your name in songs so I don’t have to Google it).

Then we just cuddled in bed and listened to instrumental Beatles. I fluffed their sheets one last time and kissed them goodnight. And somehow all our monsters seemed to dissipate into the stars.