The evening the government re-formed, and I watched it like a match.

I did not mean to spend the evening this way. I made dinner with the phone face-up on the counter, and every few minutes it offered me another name: a chancellor, probably; a business secretary, returning; a department, reportedly, about to be dismantled. I refreshed between stirring. I read the same three facts phrased four ways. I had, if I am honest, no decision to make about any of it. I was not participating. I was spectating, the way you spectate a match you have no stake in, except that a match ends, and this just kept feeding.

Here is the small thing I noticed. The hours after work are supposed to be the unspoken-for ones, the whole reason this paper exists to ask what we do with them. Tonight mine were spoken for, entirely, by a drama that asked nothing of me and gave nothing back but the next name. It was frictionless. It was ready. It filled the evening the way water fills a glass.

I am not going to tell you to put the phone down. I did not. But before you reach again for the feed that refreshes on its own, just notice the reach. You do not have to resist it. Just see it.