Is it the word that's at the tip of your tongue; or the perfect comeback that you think of two minutes too late; or hindsight bias, your wise future self conquering its inferior predecessors, and the feeling of ignorance that only comes with learning; or maybe the dream that, for all its wonder and extravagance, you forget upon waking; the wispy-twisty smoke trails that can’t be captured; maybe its the rough contact point between harsh objectivity and soft subjectivity, simply the unbridgeable discrepancy between imagination and reality, the unnerving delay between thought and action, between impulse and impetus; maybe the fantasy land in your peripheral vision that eludes even the swiftest neck-twisting; or is it just a mosquito that you can never seem to swat, the food between your teeth that a blunt tongue cannot pluck out; perhaps the greener grass, the itch that increases with scratching, the souvenir that you buy just to put in a cupboard, the stripped screw, fresh bread gone stale, the carrot on the fishing pole before the donkey’s mouth; the inevitability of analytical error, an inch one atom too short, an A minus on the final exam, reluctantly blinking off to sleep, the last living louse, one poke past comfort, one smidgen past smothering, one blacksmith's stroke past smithereens, relatively absolute; or else perpetually unquenched ambition, the dragon who's missing a single golden scale; the ripe grapes harvested one day too early or the well-aged wine drunk one day too late; one treasure chest sunk in an infinite ocean; beach-combing only to find broken seashells; perhaps just life unrehearsed, perfectionism squelched by the tantalizingly marginal and teasingly diminishing returns; the billionaire who will never paint like Michelangelo or the poet who can't pay rent?

All of these would be pretty profound potential identity crises with which I could not help you. But it still bothers me, so if you think of it and decide your problem is more “shallow” than all that, let me know if I can do anything more to help. Maybe pumpkin pie is missing. I'll have to bring you some anyway."