The shift in topics helped, kind of. But in every quiet moment between then and now, it returned. This deep sense of emptiness. There was a realization that my race to write every fucking thing I see and tell it to the whole fucking world was some sort of desire to fill that space. To engage in ways that I usually would be but through different means.

Asking for condiments was a violation almost as grave as not wanting to try something unfamiliar. It was a corollary rookies would often violate. No matter how much we tried to stop or prepare them for the protocol, we’d inevitably fail. One such occasion came in my sophomore year of high school, one of my less experienced friends joined us for the usual Friday feast of grilled meats, rice (one bowl of plain rice, another bowl of rice with egg yolk), and salad.