Looking at my bank account fills me with joy.

The banking app gets opened eleven times a day by people who are not budgeting. It's the same instinct as checking a lock you already locked — the number can't have changed since breakfast, and the checking is the anxiety rather than the cure.

Then there are stretches when opening it is genuinely pleasant. Same app, same person, an entirely different act.

What shifts between those two states is hardly ever the balance alone. It's whether the number is being asked a question you're frightened of.