By the time I sat down Friday night, it was 7:30 PM and I had lived what felt like three weeks crammed into five days. Sleep was a rumor. Anxiety was a clingy roommate. Coffee was my emotional support animal. It was one of those weeks. The kind where you start looking at your calendar and wondering if the days have secretly expanded to 36 hours just to taunt you.

So finally, I parked myself on the couch. Deep exhale. Dogs at my feet. Pajamas on. And what did I choose for my big moment of decompression? A Netflix show about romance fraudsters.

Now, I could have gone with a nature documentary, or a cooking show with gentle British accents, or even just silence. But no. My tired brain said: “You know what would be soothing right now? Watching people get conned by fake lovers on the internet.”

And you know what? It worked. Odd choices often do. Somewhere between the fake accents, the too-good-to-be-true texts, and the inevitable crash of heartbreak-meets-bank-account, my shoulders unclenched.

It reminded me of how I used to watch horror movies on airplanes. Normally, I hate horror. Creepy dolls? No thank you. Jump scares? Hard pass. But put me on a flight at 30,000 feet and suddenly Freddy Krueger is my emotional wingman. Somehow, externalizing fear by watching someone else run screaming from zombies made me less focused on my own terror of turbulence.

Same thing with fraudsters. Watching people get duped by smooth-talking con artists somehow made my week of endless work, medical appointments, and sleepless nights feel like background noise.  Sometimes, perspective comes wrapped in the strangest packaging.

Decompression doesn’t always look like candles, chamomile, and meditation apps. Sometimes it looks like true crime romance scams or terrible horror movies on a tiny airplane screen. Odd choices help us survive. And honestly? I’ll take it.

Happy weekend. May your decompression be as weird and as effective as mine.