My apologies for the silence last week. A full week in the constant company of other human beings proved an all-consuming effort. My goal was to maintain base-level courtesy to strangers, colleagues, and close friends over the course of my trip. Though successful, I therefore could not produce more words for my weekly update than already necessary.
Small talk is exhausting; not because it’s uninspiring, but because it squeezes my words into a corset. Honestly, I’d prefer the conversation to sport an over-sized sweatshirt so that we can spread beyond those rigid, antiquated structures of formal communication. I’d prefer to explore your mind freely than constrict my questions to “where do you work” or “where did you go to school?”
After my work training ended Friday afternoon, I was treated to a weekend sprinkled with a handful of my favorite human beings. It was pretty incredible, now that I think about it, the way my visits echoed back to every stage of my life:
lunch with an elementary school friend,
an evening catch-up session with middle & high school confidantes,
a three-night sleepover with my college mister-from-another-sister (pretend it’s a thing),
a cooking date with my first Parisian roommate & then a much-anticipated snuggle with my most recent roommate a.k.a. my personal cheerleader,
and a 9-mile-too-long run with a new friend through Central Park.
The process of creating this list of events has been quite humbly for me. Moments when I shrank down
or extended beyond or
grounded firmly or
bloomed brilliantly are inscribed in the fabric of my relationships with these folks. Each individual who I reconnected with hasn’t experienced every period of my growth. My memories with these friends reflect a moment in time, just like pieces of a collage. Photos taken over the course of a lifetime are seemingly unrelated. My elementary school buddy remembers me as a pig-tailed 3rd grader chasing boys around the playground. My post-university friends have witnessed my clumsy effort to create community in a foreign space. Eventually, though, the snapshots compile into a cohesive, coffee-stained, perfectly imperfect album.
Thus far in 2020 I’ve continued on with mundane tasks, like brushing my teeth and alternating between the same two things for lunch everyday. These are inconsequential moments in both my life and the lives of my friends & family. Others with whom I’ve connected recently are confronting monumental periods of transition. They are anxiously awaiting notifications from graduate programs or welcoming a baby nephew into the family or finishing up edits to their first novel. Our parallel lives happen to intersect during these pivotal events in their timeline, and I am therefore gifted a sneak peek into their next chapter.
Are you currently brainstorming how to transition into another phase or enjoying the wave of stability? How is your story crafted, in first-person or third? Although you might not be creating a script with a specific voice in mind, the reader will consume & analyze whatever you choose to share. I’m grateful that my inner words, the photos that are being taken right now are crafting a narrative that I am proud of. Thank you for accepting the snippets of my story that I share.