The best thoughts are penned at ungodly hours of the night, pre-dawn musings that tend to tumble out of the brain faster than one’s pointer finger can document them in the iPhone’s ‘notes’ app. Or, at least that’s what I tell myself, as yet another night of sleep is interrupted by random ramblings jostling for position in my subconscious.
I’ve written plenty in the past about the abstract art of patience. And also, my lack of it. Be it with people responding to communications, life progress and self-inflicted milestones, or simply waiting on line at the drive-thru for an order you just know is going to be wrong by the time you reach the pick-up window.
It’s all the same, really. That delicate balance between biding your time and losing your shit, between taking initiative and recognizing that the second anyone else enters the picture, all sense of perceived ‘control’ over a situation is relinquished.
I’ve often discussed this with friends and family, the notion that my entire life — and perhaps theirs as well — is spent waiting, in some form. For people to rise to the occasion, to help push along the narrative you’ve written for yourself, to get the hell out of the way… whatever. And, short of bodily shoving them in one direction or another, well, it’s baby steps.
One moment at a time. A giant chess match. Except I don’t even know how to play the game.
And so, we fake it. All of us. Day by day. Pretending we have a plan, that we know where the next steps will lead, or even what they are. Rise and shine, rinse and repeat. Maybe something good will come, or maybe we’ll get our hopes up and be left wondering what else we could have done instead.
The intent is for it to all come together in the end, right? Experiment til you get it right. Do the thing. Reach out to the people. Buy the ticket, take the ride. {I know, you were wondering when the Johnny Depp reference would come.} Speaking of… well, iykyk.
Hopes and dreams, plans and passions. All that. More soon, hopefully.
• • •
Postscript. Oh yeah, the title. The original inspiration for this midnight word salad. Sort of a hybrid theory — the irony of being vague enough in public musings so as not to upset too many apple carts, while also toggling the majority of my social media feeds to ‘public,’ expressly for the purpose of garnering attention and eyes from those I wish to connect with.
Can’t put yourself out there if you’re hiding, am I right? Vanity metrics aside, it’s not how many, but who. And all it takes is one.