Life Happens

By Nick Fewings 

Last week, I put together a text message to go to a friend. It took me hours. A sleepless night. Draft upon draft. Countless changes in approach. Taking words away. Adding words in. Deleting everything. Starting from scratch. And then, deleting it all again. I put such great care into the whole process. But I never sent the text message out. And I’m happy I didn’t. Once it all came out, I realized it didn’t need to be said (yet).

When I was around age 12, I wanted to write a book. So I read a book on how to write a book. I was instructed to write a certain number of words each day for a month. And was told that, at the end of the month, I’d have a novel. I did this for more than half of a month. Then, I went on a vacation to Florida and lost a notebook with weeks worth of writing for my novel in it. I’ll never know what happened to the characters I wrote. I never finished my novel. But I can’t help but wonder how it all would’ve ended and how good it would’ve felt to finish it... I think I’ll try writing a novel again someday.

When I started my first full time job, I spent 5 months getting comfortable in my first position before another enticing opportunity opened up in the company. So I applied and earned a new position in a new department. At first, I was very excited. But my new boss didn’t like me, so it all went downhill from there, and I left the company a few months later. The sour ending left a bad taste in my mouth for the whole experience...but I got out okay and more equipped for my next job on the other side.

Sometimes, you won’t actually send out that text message to a friend that you’ve been obsessing over for a day. Sometimes, you’ll put days into writing a book you won’t ever finish. Sometimes, you’ll decide to jump into a new job opportunity only to have it backfire into your face and leave you back up on the job market. Sometimes, shit happens. Sometimes - usually - that shit doesn’t make much sense. It’s up to you to sift through the bullshit and make sense of it all. To construct from your experiences a narrative that pushes you forward in your life story and brings you to places you’d like to go next... Not everything happens for a reason. So, it’s up to you to make reason out of everything that happens.

Life is weird. Good luck sorting it all out.

By Kent Treloar