Not a discipline experiment. I just got busy, noticed on Thursday that I hadn’t opened the app since Sunday, and decided to see how long I could keep it going.

Answer: eleven days, and then I looked, and the number was a number.

The first two days were loud

I hadn’t understood how automatic the check had become. Kettle boiling, phone out. Standing in a queue, phone out. Waking at night, phone out. It’s not really about the money at that frequency. Nothing meaningful happens to a position in the ninety seconds between two glances. It’s a slot machine with a portfolio-shaped skin on it.