Wednesday.
Another one this morning, the kind I can spot from the subject line now before I even open it.
Thank you for your interest in the position...
Read it standing at the kitchen bench, tea going cold behind me. Deleted it before I'd finished the second sentence.
Fifteen years an accountant, back in China. Feels like something I have to explain now, in every interview, instead of something anyone just already knows about me.
Updated the résumé anyway, third time this month, the same three lines shuffled around like furniture in a room that's already too small to rearrange properly.
My daughter came down for water around ten, HSC folder still tucked under one arm even at that hour, and asked without really looking up whether anything had come through.
Told her not yet. She nodded, the way you nod at weather you can't do anything about, and went back upstairs, socks slapping on every second stair the way they always do.
Sat a long while after that. Laptop still open on Seek, cursor blinking in the search bar, not really reading any of it.
Went looking for the old notebook instead — small, navy, the corners gone soft — the one I used to keep years ago, back when writing a few lines a night felt like nothing worth mentioning to anyone. Hadn't opened it since the boxes came off the ship.
Half the pages still blank.
Didn't have anything big to put in it. No decision made, nothing solved. Same three numbers going round my head that have been there for weeks now — rent, school fees, how many more months the rest of it would stretch.
Wrote one small thing down instead. Just my daughter at the bench, half asleep, still worried enough to ask.
Read it back once. Didn't fix anything, reading it.
But it was mine, and it was true, and for a few minutes that felt like reason enough to keep going.
Closed the notebook before I could talk myself out of it. Left it out on the bench instead of putting it away in the drawer, somewhere I'd actually see it again tomorrow.
Didn't know yet what tomorrow would turn into. Just knew I wanted somewhere to put the small things, before another week went by and I'd forgotten I ever noticed them at all.