A/N: Coming here after a long time with a small chapter.


Penny fiddles with the sleeves of her Cheesecake Factory uniform. She crumples up the cloth in her hand and straightens it up again, only to repeat the process. The manager eyes her as she stands behind the bar, deep in thought, but as there are no customers, he can't complain. He has to admit though that she makes a good bartender. She never messes up a drink order and has actually come up with a few concoctions of her own, which the customers love.

'To think I almost fired her.' He thinks.

Seeing a regular customer enter, he hurries to greet them.

Penny is oblivious to all of this. She's been feeling out of sorts since she woke up.

Give up drinking? Check.

Exercise regularly? Check.

Pay her bills? Check.

Be more mindful at her job? Check.

She's doing good so far. So why does she feel unfulfilled? Like she's back in high school, the career counselor cheerily asking "What's next for you, Penelope? Where do you go from here?"

She still doesn't know the answer. She's not good at the acting thing. Looks don't translate to on-camera talent. She doesn't have the discipline to sit in a classroom and learn day after day, month after month. How Sheldon got so many degrees, she doesn't know. But then he's passionate about it. Penny wracks her brains, trying to find out what she's passionate about, but her mind is blank. There is nothing specific she's good at either. If this were one of the movies she is always auditioning for, she would have unexpectedly come into some money and gone on a long vacation to a foreign country, where she made friends and discovered her passion and made money from it, settling into an exciting life. But this is real life. No such hopes for her. Not sinking into despair is the hardest thing to do right now. But she keeps going, one day at a time, one hour at a time.

"One Moscow Mule, please."

Penny smiles at the girl in front of her. One customer at a time.


In a well-furnished room, Howard taps his foot against the carpeted floor. This is his first time coming to a psychologist and he has no idea what to expect. Raj said the guy was good, but then again, Raj still can't talk to women. He wonders if it would be better not talking to women at all instead of creeping them out with his behavior.

Probably.

But that's what he's here for, isn't he? To get rid of the creepiness so that he can talk to women without them feeling creeped out?

Turns out the psychologist has other plans.

"Howard, we must find out why you behave this way. Only then, we can start making changes that will help you get to a better place."

"But if we already know the problem, why not just work on it instead of all this why business?"

"You work with machines, right?"

Howard bristled. This guy sounded like he was friends with Sheldon.

"I'm an aerospace engineer."

The doctor noted the slight resentment in his tone. Defensive about his profession. Interesting. We'll come back to that later.

"Okay, so when something malfunctions on a spacecraft, you don't simply fix it, do you? You look into how and why it went wrong, so that you can assess if any other parts have been harmed, see if this issue may reoccur in the future, or if it can lead to any other issues. "

Howard nodded, impressed. "You're right, doc."

"Therapy isn't about me being right, Howard. It's about learning to understand yourself better."

An hour later, Howard walked out of the doctor's office. His problem hadn't been solved, hell they hadn't even gotten to it. But he was sure the doctor could help him work things out. He would be okay.


Reviews will make this girl very happy! Ik not much is happening in this chapter, but isn't that how life works? Hope to see you soon with a new chapter.