Life sometimes feels like I’m in a room surrounded by boxes. They’re all white and the same make—only five sides and open at the top like a crate without handles—but they’re all different sizes. They’re not neatly stacked. They’re floating. All over the place. I have to rush around to find the one I need, and as I reach for them and push them out of the way, I get glimpses of the bursting colour within them. And then I get distracted. There are so many boxes I forgot that I had. I go diving into them, my head buried amongst the chaos of an unsorted box, as the box I was looking for just floats on by behind me.

That’s really what I picture sometimes, as I’m sitting there at my desk trying to remember all the parts of my life that I’m forgetting, whilst simultaneously forgetting what I’m doing. My head feels like a white, empty space. With all of the things I want to do, lost in labelless boxes that are just floating around, only for me to remember them when I catch sight of their contents every so often. And then I get excited when I start remembering all of them, and I start pulling them down to the ground to sort them so I’ll have time for all of them. But as I’m sorting one of them, the other boxes are just floating off again … and it’s a frustrating cycle. And it doesn’t just happen at my desk. Sometimes I have my head buried in a box when someone is trying to talk to me. And when I realise, I let go of the box in front of me, and they’re all white and floating and forgotten.

Which box was I looking for now?