Maybe you'll wake up one morning and look at your phone before you've even fully opened your eyes,
Scroll through the 47 things that have absolutely nothing to do with you,
And feel vaguely terrible about all of them,
And then get up and do it all again tomorrow.
And that's fine.
Maybe you'll spend three years building something you genuinely believe in,
And then post it into the void.
Watch it get seven views,
And sit with that particular silence that follows.
And that's fine.
Maybe you'll watch someone considerably less talented than you,
Get considerably more recognition than you,
And then feel the thing you're not supposed to feel about that,
The thing that is not very enlightened,
Or evolved,
Or in alignment with your higher self.
And that's fine.
Maybe,
Like me,
You'll hit your 40s and realize that you have been performing a version of yourself for so long that you've genuinely lost track of where the performance ends.
And maybe you'll dye your hair blue on a Tuesday just to feel like yourself for five whole minutes.
And that's fine.
Maybe the algorithm will decide,
Based on a criteria that nobody really understands,
That your face is simply not the face it wants to show to people today.
Maybe this will happen on a day when you made something you were actually proud of.
And that's fine.
Maybe the news will be bad again.
It usually is.
Maybe someone powerful will say something stupid that would have ended a career ten years ago,
And by next week everyone will have moved on because there's always something else happening.
Maybe you'll feel the particular exhaustion of being a person who still pays attention.
And that's fine.
Maybe you'll cry in your balcony about money,
And then make a cup of coffee and write something,
And feel just a little bit better without fully understanding why making things helps,
But just accepting that it does.
And that's fine.
Maybe,
Maybe you'll get nine years sober and still have mornings where the gap between who you are and who you want to be by now feels wider than it ever has.
Maybe you'll just use your tools anyway.
Maybe they will work well enough.
And that's fine.
Maybe someone out there will tell you that you have an amazing writing style,
That your work is really something,
And they don't know why it has not taken off yet.
Maybe you'll smile and say thank you and mean it,
And also want to put your head through the fucking wall.
And that's fine.
Maybe you're not behind.
Maybe the timeline you have been measuring yourself against was never yours in the first place.
Maybe the version of success you were sold doesn't actually fit the life you were trying to build.
And maybe the ten people who found the thing you made at midnight needed it in a way the ten thousand passive scrollers never would have.
Maybe showing up anyway,
Just for today,
In the silence,
With no true guarantees of anything,
Is not the consolation prize.
Maybe that was the whole point.
And that's fine.
