She's exemplary, and she'll tell you so. A supplement drawer with a morning shelf and an evening shelf. Opinions about seed oils, and the confidence to share them. Every drink she takes has a reason — electrolytes for the workout, magnesium for the sleep, greens for the guilt. Nothing passes her lips that hasn't first justified itself to the committee. A model of the optimised life: nothing for pleasure, everything for a purpose. Which is a lot of admin to run on a glass of water.
Which is what makes Friday, 20:15, a problem.
the venue. New place, group dinner, the menu goes round. Her eyes do the usual thing — scanning each item for what it'll do — and snag on a soda that does nothing at all. No adaptogens. No function. Nothing for the skin, the gut, the mitochondria. Just three flavours and an admission, right there on the menu, that the sugar is real. There is no reason on earth to order it, which is the best reason we can think of. She orders it.
It's cold, sharp, sweet, and completely indefensible. She can't log it. She can't tell the committee it was for anything. She drinks it because it tastes good and she felt like it — which, as far as we're concerned, has always been reason enough. She has a second. The second has even less excuse than the first, and goes down even better.
Nothing was optimised. No goal was served. By every metric she lives by, the night was a write-off. She says it was the best she's felt in months — and we're inclined to trust her over the metrics.