No one tells you how quietly a week can slip by when you don’t leave the house.
It was a Tuesday. The kind that feels like a placeholder. I hadn’t showered. My inbox had fourteen unread emails—twelve marked urgent by people with no sense of proportion. The fruit in the fridge was fermenting into a science project. My husband stood near the sink, staring at a leaking tap like it owed him money.
And I wanted a croissant.
Not just a bite. A mission. The flakiest, warmest, crisp-on-the-outside croissant, possibly filled with almond cream and salvation.
I left without a plan. Grabbed a canvas tote I hadn’t cleaned out in weeks and slid into sandals one rainstorm away from retirement. The walk to the bakery was twenty-two minutes. I watched my phone count them down with 2% battery left. Every few minutes, I half-hoped the bakery would vanish, just to prove something.
In a way, it did.
Closed for renovation. A sign flapped on the door. A cartoon baguette smiled beside it, holding a tiny hammer like this was all very whimsical and not a personal betrayal.
I stood there.
And then I laughed. A real, involuntary laugh. Loud enough to startle a dog. I’d walked half an hour, skipped a workday, risked a sandal blowout, and talked myself into believing I deserved joy—only to be met by a cartoon carbohydrate holding construction tools.
I went home empty-handed but lighter. Not in the spiritual sense. Just less stuck.
That croissant wasn’t about hunger. It was about movement. After three days of inertia, it had given me a reason to step outside, to interrupt the loop I hadn’t realized I was caught in.
Sometimes we call these things silly. We tell ourselves it’s just a craving, a distraction, another excuse to procrastinate. But some cravings are quiet alarms. They don’t shout. They nudge. They tell you something’s off before your body starts yelling in other ways.
The walk did more for me than any productivity hack. I didn’t solve anything. But I stopped stewing. The inbox could wait. The basil plant was already dead.
I didn’t get what I wanted. But I came back with a mind that wasn’t fogged up with guilt and stale air. And that’s worth something.
Not every urge deserves a pedestal. Some are just noise. But others—the ones that linger, the ones that feel oddly precise—might be telling you to move, to pause, to choose differently than the to-do list says.
Next time I feel one tugging at me, I won’t swat it away.
I’ll check the bakery first. And walk anyway.
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