In other words, I am an expert!

I hope you will write to me at workfriend@nytimes.com, but today I thought I’d kick off my rotation by answering some of my favorite work questions from the scary wilds of Reddit. Why anyone would ask a bunch of anonymous strangers for work advice on a message board when one could ask a brilliant temporary expert like me is, itself, a question for the ages. In the meantime, here are some queries about death, if we’re really being honest about it.

Is This Real Life?

I’m 25 and female, and I work full time. I get seven to eight hours of sleep per night (with some nights of four or five, here and there). Do I just look permanently tired now? Is this adult life? I have pretty huge dark circles under my eyes that I try to cover with makeup, but you can see the “indents.” At the start of this year I tried to bring down the puffiness by putting frozen spoons on my eyes each morning. Inadvertently, I think I may have “shrunk” the fat cells around my eyes, leaving me looking even more gaunt.

— carmensandiego1985, via Reddit

The bad news is that 25 is just about the magical age when your cells stop reproducing as efficiently as they once did, and your body begins to become an increasingly inaccurate and haggard-looking copy of itself. This means that you do indeed look permanently tired now, at least relative to how you looked before.

The good news is that this happens to everybody, so there is a vast trove of accumulated human knowledge about how to make yourself look just a little bit less tired. Have you had your thyroid checked? That can cause dark circles beneath the eyes, and it can also lead to weight gain. Do you smoke or drink to excess? Is it possible you suffer from anemia? It would probably be a good idea for you to visit with a doctor just to make sure nothing is wrong with you besides your chronic lack of sleep. (They could even take a look at your eyes, though from what I just read on Google, you would be unlikely to kill fat cells in your eyelids with frozen spoons without also visibly damaging your skin and maybe even your eyeballs!)