Sorry I'm Not a Robot

This poem is for the individuals, the freelancers, the founders running something alone who have started apologizing for sleep. For having a life that occasionally interrupts the work. It is not a complaint and it is not a diagnosis.

“There is a box on the internet
that asks us to confirm we are not a bot.
We check it a dozen times a week.
We have never once been asked
to confirm we are people.
Nobody is asking.

Sorry we slept.
Sorry the email sat two days
while a thing happened in our actual life.
Sorry we were inconsistent,
meaning: sorry we were a person
across a span of time.
Sorry we made the wrong call in March
with the information available in February.
Sorry we needed a break
in an economy with no word for break,
only churn, only pause, only lapsed.

Somewhere the terms changed.
Feeling became a line item.
Interest in how we are
now runs exactly as deep
as what it returns.
We used to be assets;
Now we are overhead with a pulse.

But watch the people who own the machines.
Watch them talk about bandwidth and uptime,
about merging with the thing they built,
about a chip in the skull
as though the skull were the problem.
Watch them not sleep either.
Watch them describe their own species
as a legacy system.

They are not the opposite of us.
THEY ARE THE SAME WOUND, FUNDED.
They went numb in a boardroom.
We went numb at a kitchen table
with a cold espresso and a laptop
and a spreadsheet that will not balance.
The only real difference is the exit.

We are not asking to be excused.
We are saying the standard is fiction
and everyone is failing it,
including the people who wrote it,
including the ones selling it.

There is no robot on the other end of this.
There is a tired person with better PR.

So, after all, maybe we should take the apology back.
Not out of defiance;
Out of accuracy.”

If any of this landed, you are not the only one. Our Founders Scale & Support Circles meet free online every two weeks. Zoom with people who understand the specific loneliness of running something alone. https://www.meetup.com/mindful-founders-inc/

If you are experiencing suicidal thoughts or feel overwhelmed, you are not alone. Call or text 988 for immediate crisis support.