For a few days now, almost as if the universe has been conspiring to send me messages, I’ve been bumping into the same cohesive conclusion: anything can change, and I must be ready. I say this not to invite notions of doom and gloom, but to avoid falling prey to naive positivity.
Investment is a funny word to me, and not in a comical sense. In our spaces, it’s part of the daily vocabulary, yet it’s rarely used in service of anything outside of money. But investments can be emotional too, and I’m of the opinion that those kinds of investments are just as costly as clicking the Buy button.
The “why” of why we are here, the depth of the bucket — the crab bucket, to be precise — is nothing more than an unflattering analogy for the reality we experience. Like you, I have my biases, the kind that blind me to flaws, to the observable warts in my own skin. Like you, I’ve also made grave mistakes, and I’ve had to learn to accept them... or not, and nonetheless continue moving along the path.
If I had to be brutally honest with myself for one minute and ask what I’ve actually gained from being here for so long, the answer might not be the kind that leaves everyone feeling inspired. In one word: experience.
Maybe that’s all there really is to gain. Maybe that’s the actual prize, and anything else that comes along is simply icing on the cake... or maybe just half a cherry.
Watching these markets bring projects to their knees, watching ideas collapse under the weight of reality, has me thinking about my own endeavors and the possibility of needing a change in direction. Maybe even the necessity of it. If that sounds negative, I apologize, but once again, I’m trying not to live inside a cloud.
A collection of repositories.
I think that would be my answer if I had to boil everything down into some kind of objective, measurable gain. Ideas converted into usable things. Thoughts concreted into experiments people can actually touch. Maybe that’s enough. Maybe it isn’t. But the point is that it has to be, because it probably already is.
At the end of the day, this journey — whatever you want to call it — is probably something I’ll laugh about anyway. All the seriousness of it staining the glass, standing in contrast with the reality that although I’ve felt this way before, as if the trail ahead is being swallowed by thick vegetation, I never truly stopped moving forward.
And maybe that matters more than arriving anywhere at all.
MenO
