My shoulder has been hurting for three weeks and I keep being surprised by it. I'll be in the middle of something - responding to something, managing something - and the shoulder will send its reminder again, patient and specific. Not a vague tension. An exact pain in an exact place. I ignored it the first week. The second week I took some ibuprofen and forgot about it. This week I finally looked at it in the mirror, moved the arm around slowly, tried to remember when I last stopped to do something like that.

My body has been filing reports the whole time. Not just the shoulder. I'm tired in a way that's specific, not general. I'm hungry for something that isn't any of the things I've been eating. My eyes hurt in the evenings from screens I can't turn down. None of it is dramatic. All of it has been there, waiting to be read. I've been reading the wrong things. How long has your body been trying to tell you something you've been too busy to hear?