Buffering

Modern life promised us jetpacks. It delivered a fridge that judges our snacks, a thermostat with strong opinions, and a customer-service pan flute that will haunt what remains of your soul.

In eighteen warm, wickedly observant comic essays, Margo Pendleton chronicles the small, undignified battles of being a barely functional adult in the age of buffering. The forty-one minutes on hold that end in a transfer. The smart home that's smarter than you and, frankly, a little concerned. The oat milk you bought once, ironically, that your refrigerator now believes is the real you. The group chat that never sleeps, the flat-pack furniture with one triumphant leftover screw, the self-checkout machine with the emotional range of a parole officer.

Pendleton's premise is deceptively simple and quietly devastating: we are not the species that makes tools. We are the species that waits for the tools to load. Life, she argues, is a progress bar stuck at ninety-four percent — close enough to feel the finish, far enough that the finish is a rumor. The laundry, the inbox, the half-drafted apology, the improved version of yourself: all of it, gloriously, permanently loading. And maybe that's not a failure. Maybe it's just a Tuesday.

This is humor for everyone who has ever lost an argument with a printer, watched their parents discover memes, or shouted STOP at a speaker that decided this was finally your moment. Pendleton writes with the kind of sharp, generous wit that finds something tender underneath all the chaos — the ninety seconds of hon that somehow outweighs the thirty-eight minutes of flute.

Funny enough to read aloud to the person next to you. Kind enough to make you feel less alone. Buffering doesn't offer solutions — it offers the laugh and the hand on the shoulder, and permission to say the words no machine will ever mean: It can stay loading. So can I.