The car in the driveway.
After another day of work,
You pull in,
Put the car in park,
And turn the engine off.
But you don't get out.
You hear the engine ticking as it cools.
The lights on the dashboard slowly fade one at a time.
You glance up and see somebody's shadow moving from room to room inside the house.
And you sit there,
Not doing anything.
Not on your phone,
Necessarily.
Just kidding.
Your hands stay on the wheel for a while,
Then eventually fall into your lap as you settle into the car that isn't going anywhere.
Two minutes eventually turned into ten.
If somebody noticed,
Walked over,
And asked you what you were doing.
You'd have no answer.
You say nothing.
I'm coming.
Which is true and which explains nothing at all.
Behind you is part of your life where you were needed all day by people who had every right to need you.
In front of you is the part where you'll be needed again,
Starting the second that door opens.
And this,
This small dark box on wheels,
Parked on pavement.
Going nowhere.
Is the only place today where nobody wants anything from you.
That was a stretch of years where I get to work 15 minutes early on purpose.
Not to get a head start on the things that I knew I had to do.
I had to sit in the lot.
Radio off.
Watching people cross the parking lot and go inside.
And I told myself.
I was getting right in my head.
That's what I called it for years.
It was dread.
I can say it now.
It took me a long time to say it because I liked my job.
I was good at it.
And dread felt like the wrong word for a man who had nothing to complain about.
All right,
Sending that a lot.
And watch the door.
And I'll wait until the last possible minute.
Because the second that I walked through it.
It stopped being mine.
And I think a lot of us have this backwards.
Sometime it isn't the work that wears you out.
Is being reachable through it all.
Eight hours of it.
Every question written to you because you're the one who answers.
Every problem brought to you because you're the one who handles things.
There's small constant awareness running underneath everything else.
That somebody could need you at any moment,
And you would say yes.
And we don't stop.
Because stopping has to be justified.
We don't rest.
Because rest is what you do after.
And there is no after.
There is only the next thing.
We don't say we're tired because saying it out loud means somebody would have to do something about it.
And there's nobody to do anything about it.
So we take the 10 minutes by accident.
In the parking lot.
In the driveway.
In the dark.
And then we get out the car and act like it didn't happen.
So let me ask you something.
Where's your driveway?
It might not be a car.
It might be the long way home.
It might be a shower that went 11 minutes longer than what it needed to.
It might be the parking lot of a store you did not need a single thing from.
Everybody's got somewhere,
Some small unwashed place before the next door opens.
Take a moment and find yours.
Take a moment and stop calling it wasting time.
Take a moment and let it be what it is.
And that's all that this is right here.
Another one of those places.
Nobody's gonna knock on the glass.
Nobody's waiting on you for the next few minutes.
So get comfortable enough that your body stops asking you for things.
Let it get quiet.
Now close your eyes.
Breathe in.
And let it go.
One more in.
And all the way out.
Now put yourself in the car.
Engine off.
Ticking as it cools.
Light on in the house.
Somebody moving past a window.
And you.
Not going anywhere.
Nobody knows where you are.
For the next few minutes.
Build what your hands do.
When nothing needs holding.
You've been calling this.
A bad habit.
Nobody.
Ever told you that you could just stop.
So you found a way.
To do it that didn't require permission.
Stay here,
A minute.
Take one more breath.
Open your eyes when you're ready.
Everything waiting on the other side of that door will still be there.
Before these few minutes.
You were here too.
And maybe.
That was the point.
