Missing now.

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I am waiting for the mail to arrive. I am waiting for a notification to pop up. I am waiting to arrive at my destination.

And there’s no shortage of distractions to take away the pain of waiting. There’s an Instagram feed full of carefully curated lives. There’s a Facebook feed brimming with incendiary tidbits of identity politics, adorable pets, lumpy looking newborns, and people arguing about a Nike advertisement.

If I’m craving something more substantial, there’s plenty of news to take away the pain. I can dive into the machinations of the White House, or the debate over net neutrality, or the pending global water and food crises.

For a few brief moments, the pain of waiting subsides. The whiny part of me that wants the mail to arrive, or the email to show up, or the destination to loom into view shuts up.

Waking up

My error was and is so apparent that I got out of bed at 4:45 a.m. and set to work writing this. This blog itself is a metaphor for the error. I’ve avoided updating it because years later, I’m still unsure of what it should be about. So I’ve ignored it.

The solution will present itself, I thought. I’ll wait for a better idea. I’ll wait for something to inspire me. I’ll wait until I have more experience.

Yeah. I don’t know. Maybe.

Do you wait for the right moment to clean your gutters? Do you wait to feel inspired to take out out the trash? Do you wait to change your oil until the engine seizes? The solutions to these problems don’t present themselves because the solutions are self-evident.

Aubrey Marcus’ recent brush with death reminded me that this is it. This moment. Not the next one. Not the one that just passed. This one.

If I’m waiting for something, I’m missing the point because I’m missing now.

Of interest