long roads, uncertain conclusions
after a happy hour across the river yesterday in the VA, i elected to take advantage of a lovely evening and bike home rather than hopping on metro. it was faster from where i was anyway, really.
i crossed the key bridge and rode past my old office in georgetown. and rode home by the same route i once took daily to get home.
it doesn’t look so familiar anymore.
the office door is just another door. the route is just another set of roads, just like any roads in the city that i know, but that aren’t hardwired into my head. when you take the same path everyday, it becomes a little area in your mind. stop sign, stop light, here’s where the bike lane runs out, this is the intersection where the light is never timed for me. it’s a checklist in the head, a daily re-run of the same film.
the film of my georgetown ride home has been cut out, the checklist shredded. it’s two years later now (almost exactly, in fact), and it seems like i have a different life.
if you want to know the truth, losing that job was not a sharp turning point. i continued going downhill, inwardly, for the better part of a year after that. things turned around for me, but it was more of a wide u-turn than a screeching of tires and a change of direction.
some aspects of those days seem like a muddy dream. was that really me?
care must be taken. best not to let such things happen again. they creep up on you, until you wake up in the middle of the night and realize no one knows who you are, least of all yourself. it comes from living with dissatisfaction, stuffing all the poison inside, folding everything about you back in and over itself into a tiny, tidy, weighty package. you are a star gone supernova and collapsed back in on yourself. small, dense, and dark.
celebrate what you have. and if you have things not worth celebrating, take steps daily to remove them, rather than swallowing the bitter pill of acceptance. this is the only life you have. so fuck compromising.
i crossed the key bridge and rode past my old office in georgetown. and rode home by the same route i once took daily to get home.
it doesn’t look so familiar anymore.
the office door is just another door. the route is just another set of roads, just like any roads in the city that i know, but that aren’t hardwired into my head. when you take the same path everyday, it becomes a little area in your mind. stop sign, stop light, here’s where the bike lane runs out, this is the intersection where the light is never timed for me. it’s a checklist in the head, a daily re-run of the same film.
the film of my georgetown ride home has been cut out, the checklist shredded. it’s two years later now (almost exactly, in fact), and it seems like i have a different life.
if you want to know the truth, losing that job was not a sharp turning point. i continued going downhill, inwardly, for the better part of a year after that. things turned around for me, but it was more of a wide u-turn than a screeching of tires and a change of direction.
some aspects of those days seem like a muddy dream. was that really me?
care must be taken. best not to let such things happen again. they creep up on you, until you wake up in the middle of the night and realize no one knows who you are, least of all yourself. it comes from living with dissatisfaction, stuffing all the poison inside, folding everything about you back in and over itself into a tiny, tidy, weighty package. you are a star gone supernova and collapsed back in on yourself. small, dense, and dark.
celebrate what you have. and if you have things not worth celebrating, take steps daily to remove them, rather than swallowing the bitter pill of acceptance. this is the only life you have. so fuck compromising.