Clocking in.

It’s a slow sunrise over New York. A very dirty, acidic sunrise backlit by early morning winter clouds. I’m one of the first few to make it to the office. There is work to be done today. Meetings to attend this morning. Deliverables to be attended to this afternoon. Action items on a notepad next to handdrawn checkboxes. My sleeves smell of hand-me-down clothes and canned fruit from the shelter that I couldn’t hand out quite fast enough at 6am this morning. I fold my powdered sweatshirt and twist up my hair so that you’d really think I belong here in my office. At my job. ‘I have a job’ I tell myself in the mirror and immediately feel grateful. For a moment I feel a wave of strangeness, something near guilt, first kind of like I’m cheating on my job by helping to feel those who don’t have one and then as if I’m cheating on them by having one. Either way, I take these first few minutes of the morning to run my cold hands under the cold water. Wake up and move to the next chapter. Next chapter of your day. Next chapter of your life. Next chapter of you, when no two are ever the same and someone keeps putting twists in the plot. Here in my cubicle slowly applying hand lotion and watching the manhattan skyline open its blinds for eyes, I feel as though I’m reading it in third person. Just for a moment. And I…love…everything about the silence. Here where I can hear my heart make jokes on the corner of my 20’s as it waits for the next “walk” signal. There’s only a few minutes to dilly dally. A few minutes to fill my teacup, wash my hands. A few minutes of clear, uninterrupted writing up here where the air is clear and behind glass to reflect and get settled in my own life. I dream of someday finding true independence…which might actually be the realization that I am completely dependent on the entire world at large. On a grueling New York city Tuesday morning in winter right around rush hour with less than a few hours sleep for any of us on the subway cars, you can be sure that this heart ain’t tired yet. The lights are coming on in offices. I can hear the printers warming up on the morning’s first expense reports. Nobody has asked me any questions yet but I’m waiting in peace until the first one comes. I’m finished with my tea and feel soothed by the light of my screen and the unopened documents. Just two more seconds more and I’ll be ready to start.

If you've never seriously considered therapy, then you just need more of it than the average person

Sometimes, you dont know that you're good at. Sometimes you dont think you can do what you know you can. Sometimes you think if everyone is lying to you, then you're the biggest liar of all. Sometimes you decide on exactly what you will say to every single person who supported you in the case that you might let them all down. Sometimes you feel confident that you might very well ruin everything you touch. Sometimes you get to work early and you actually care that absolutely no one will notice. Sometimes any lives you may have touched, any path you may have altered, don’t matter enough to stand judgment when you call them up one by one to the stand in the wee hours of the morning. Sometimes you realize you may be singing a whole octave lower than the song you wrote yourself requires. Sometimes you notice you’ve let your parents problems right on in to your own life, welcoming them at the door with a plate of fruit and cheese and those little non-recyclable appetizer plates that could be single-handedly responsible for global warming. Could you be responsible for global warming? Or maybe just global boring. Is it you, your parents, society or your health insurance provider that expect you to be such a healthy, well-balanced yet wildly successful and shiny-bright human being? Some days, when you go to lock your apartment door behind you, making a mental note to buy Drano, and dig for your keys in a bag full of crumply receipts you haven’t yet logged in your checkbook, you definately know its not all about you. No one has to tell you that. If it was all about you, they would leave the subway doors open the extra 3 seconds so you could safely slip on the train, as opposed to jamming your right shoulder in the doors with unfettered determination not to let life leave you behind. And some mornings, a lot like this one, you get tired of shoving your way into your future in favor of standing alone on the platform, watching the overcrowded train pull away toward success, faces smushed up against the glass. And then its “This train is delayed because of train traffic ahead. Please…be patient.”

Sometimes you spend all your time waiting for always – which will be, well, never. So you’ll just have to leave a voicemail on your own machine and plan to pick it up tomorrow when you’ve had a better nights sleep.