System Maintenance Required: Your Brain’s Fear Storage Is Full and Cannot Accept New Doomsday Scenarios

I recently received a notification on my internal dashboard that I didn’t even know existed. It wasn’t a reminder to drink water or a nudge to finally cancel that gym membership I haven’t used since the Obama administration. No, it was a system-critical pop-up flashing in neon red: "Error 404: Fear Storage Full. Please delete non-essential anxieties to make room for new, impending doomsday scenarios."

Apparently, my brain has reached its maximum capacity for terror. I am officially out of disk space for dread. If a giant asteroid were spotted heading toward Earth tomorrow, I’d have to look at it and say, "I’m sorry, can you come back in three to five business days? I currently have 4 terabytes dedicated to a weird noise the dishwasher made in 2014, and there is simply no room for a planetary extinction event."

We live in an era where the news cycle moves faster than a toddler who just heard the crinkle of a snack bag. Every morning, I wake up and check my phone, only to find three new things to be terrified of before I’ve even brushed my teeth. Microplastics? Checked. Bees disappearing? Archived. The sentient AI that is definitely going to replace me with a toaster that writes better puns? I’ve got a whole folder for that.

The problem is that my hardware hasn't been updated since the Stone Age. My brain was designed to worry about two things: Sabre-toothed tigers and whether or not that berry is going to make me see God. Now, I’m expected to process global economic shifts, rising sea levels, and the fact that my favorite snack brand changed its recipe to "healthier" cardboard. My CPU is smoking. I can smell the ozone.

I tried to do some "disk cleanup" the other day. I went into the Subconscious Folder to see what I could move to the Trash. I found a massive file titled "What if the person I said 'You too' to when they told me to enjoy my meal thinks I’m a total idiot?" That file is huge. It’s taking up 40% of my processing power. But can I delete it? Of course not. That’s load-bearing anxiety. If I delete that, the whole system might crash.

I’m currently looking for an external hard drive for my neuroses, but until then, I’ve decided to implement a "One In, One Out" policy. If you want me to worry about the heat death of the universe, I’m going to have to stop worrying about why my boss used a period instead of an exclamation point in that Slack message. It’s an even trade. I’m sorry, world, but my fear drive is at 99% capacity, and I’m saving that last 1% for when I inevitably realize I left the oven on. Or didn't. It doesn't matter; the disk space is reserved regardless.