87 feet under.

A few nights ago, after a three-mile run to wind down the day, I was trudging up the stairs, dragging my traffic-cone orange feet with every step (the color from my fluorescent shoes, not the natural hue of my skin), longing to stand under the hottest possible water in the nearest possible shower (two feet in front of me by this point) to ease my tired body and mind, to warm me after the unforgiving air on any December evening. 

Every winter, I struggle with the same dryness in my skin, a parched state that comes only because I can't follow the simple rule of shorter showers during the colder months. It dries you out, everyone knows and says, it's not good for you, keep the water lukewarm. Well, I say to myself, being submerged in near-boiling (okay okay, not quite) is just about the only time from November to February that I'm not freezing my ass off, aside from blasting the heat in my teeny-tiny car (which I'm told is also a no-no), coupled with just about the only time in my entire day that nobody is able to reach me, talk to me, or intrude. Well.

So then, what do you do when the water stops?


What happens in that very moment when you are head to toe in bubbly lather, soap upon soap to rinse away the day, the waning pressure easing up against my sore shoulders, my tired frame, and the water halts, a sudden cease, not even time to fade from a stream to a drip, just


stops?


Let me explain. While this is a true story and this did in fact happen a mere few days ago, there is more to it than the inconvenience at not being able to shower for a. warmth, and b. the general sweaty state involved after a workout of any kind. It's unfortunate, and it sucks, but. Things break, and time wears against at all physical things, possessions lose value, erosion hacks away the dollar signs of any profit, even hard-working tools of our lives can cease to function, heave a life-worn sigh, and rest. (We have a well that is as old as our home. The pump to said well, 80+ feet in the ground, pumped its very last, with what I have to believe was with all its rusty might.)


It seems unfair, usually, or unbelievable, because we have a very firm and skewed belief that our investments negate natural error. The higher the price, the greater the likelihood that our, well, stuff will last forever, that we will always be able to afford the best, that our brainpower for invention will win out. Think of it as an even-God-couldn't-sink-this-ship complex. If you've seen one Titanic, you've seen them all. 


It's probably what led me to balk in disbelief as I stood, covered in suds, shivering and twisting the shower knob frantically. It's probably what makes me wrinkle my nose when my car's engine light blinks rapidly and furiously. It's most likely what makes me scratch my head with one hand, hold my college degree in the other, and wonder where the time has gone. 


The thing about guarantees is that they are temporary, which often makes them maybes at best. It doesn't make us defeated before we've even tried, and it doesn't suddenly deem certain things useless or not worth aiming for. I'm not saying college was a mistake. Where I thought it would bring me, however, is somewhere very different from where I actually stand. The mistake might lie in that I expected a more irrefutable outcome, that things would fall into a particular line in a shorte, more manageable  time frame, that I wouldn't find myself constantly elbowing against the crowd around me, all fighting for the same thing: We all want a seat on the same tiny lifeboat, all in hopes that we can escape this goddamn sinking ship. 


So? There have to be alternatives, and realizing that sooner rather than later will save you a lot of personal grief and disappointment. So we shower at the gym (yuck), or at a friend's house, or we ... don't? So you use a bottle of convenience store water to rinse away what remains. Or, on the greater scale, so we learn to swim, so we get some killer quad muscles treading deep ocean waters, so we float on until someone comes to our rescue, so we fight to keep our heads from sinking. The dead ends are self-imposed, so what I suggest is that we free ourselves from believing we have run out of options, that when things fail we've failed, and start asserting that when life is not abiding by our plans or rules that there is something better to be discovered, something beyond what we ever could have imagined for ourselves.


Truly, it would be easier if there were a personalized raft to rescue us from our own particular problems in our own particular sea. But the water is stopping completely, or it's rising fast around us, and no one is going to wait around for you to break out the shovel or start building the sturdiest of dams. It's an opportunity to both roll on and fight back, change perspectives and repair. If it's not what you anticipated, you are surely not alone. But rather than focusing on your disbelief, on your quandary with life's sudden curves, give your attention to your next move up, the ways to push forward, the new attempts you will make. To the ocean, deep into the earth, go forth go forth and go forth.

Jobs.

“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.” 

Steve Jobs said that. And, while I am convinced there can't be anyone these days who is unaware of Mr. Jobs contribution to society, to heightened interaction, to technology as a whole, should that remain a possibility, you can read more about him here. 


Steve Jobs, chief executive officer of Apple Inc., without a doubt the company that catalysts the majority of the technological advancements we see day to day, died on October 5th of this year, at the age of 56, in his own home. When someone of such remarkable influence departs from the world, we sense it, we know the shift, the sudden and heavy change in the air. Mr. Jobs passed on an inventor, a genius, an entrepreneur and an inspiration. Right? Even as I write this now, I am typing across the well-worn keys of a MacBook Pro. My iPhone is sitting next to me on the bed, plugged in and amped up, humming after a long day of scrolling through websites, emailing sisters, FaceTiming with mom, updating statuses, checking the weather. I just about never leave home without my iPod, music trailing me wherever I go. 


So what does this all mean? That Steve Jobs left a legacy, one we're all bound and able to appreciate, and that's that? In some ways, to some people, maybe. And even though I didn't follow his career as avidly as others did, I found his ventures and talks interesting, fascinating at times, and these particular words of his wise and honest, a simple message aiming for the truth, and hitting it square in the forehead, hard. I am convinced that in order to urge others not to settle, Mr. Jobs himself must have been aware of what it is to find what you love to do. Clearly what he found himself in the midst of was great work, his own great work, work that moved him, work he excelled at, work he was meant for, work that meant more than just a paycheck and a place to spend your weekdays. (Or weeknights, or weekends, or all of the above. For some of us, the days all blend into one.)


I understand what he's saying about work filling a large part of your life. Most days, all days, I can't understand myself, why I'm committing the biggest chunks of my time to a company and a place that I'm not proud to be a part of, that I don't respect, that brings me down, that seemingly wastes my talents, though that last part seems to be self-allowed. In one day increments, in one-shift-at-a-time sized measurements, it doesn't seem so hard to grasp (usually); it seems adult-like, responsible, almost necessary, from the perspective of money, money, money, an evil unto itself, I'm afraid. But when examined from a larger perspective, when I sadly realize that two years of my life have been spent in a place that has brought me no closer to what I truly want, it motivates something stronger, something bigger, it forces me to want to burst through the smudgy glass doors, dramatically and defiantly, to walk out and never return. Great work, he says? Well, I will find GREAT WORK, but it will have to be somewhere other than here. 


Somehow, though, to my own detriment, or from my own sense of what growing up, what facing reality seems to mean, though that changes every day, I have stayed. I have stayed and I have waited. I don't wait idly; I put forth and expect. I send out for things that I believe would suit me to my very soul, I send out for others that would likely be no more befitting than where I already struggle. And all along I have always thought a similar idea, or hoped for it, as this one that Mr. Jobs has so accurately and honestly worded: that our lives are meant for our own version of great work. Great work that is not necessarily great money or big houses or fierce fame. Though these are things Mr. Jobs certainly acquired, they were not the point. He did something to be proud of, something that moved him specifically, something that we all have to assume couldn't be accomplished by any one else. The bonuses are bonuses. The real feat is finding what we're meant for. 


I never met Steve Jobs. I don't know if he had any regrets, if he would have changed anything about his life having been given the opportunity. I don't know if he would have liked more time to figure all of this out, if he felt like he did everything he could have done, seen everything he could have seen. Me, merely a Apple user for life, I could never know. I feel it would be fair to guess, however, that asserting this idea of great work like he did, of so purely submitting that we will know when something is right, that he spoke from experience, which is the only way we can ever really convey the truth of any matter. He must have known what it was to settle as much as he knew what it was to rise above it. And while it can be easy to think, well yeah, when you have that much change in your pocket, or that much brains in your head, why shouldn't things work out positively for you, think again. Compromising or conditioning what we can achieve is settling in its own way, it's limiting ourselves before we've even set out or begun. 


I think that it's certainly hard to imagine things being better, or even different, when we've been facing the same four walls longer than we care to realize. Time can feel unbearably slow, like it's just outside of our grasp, things can seem like they're barely coming together, fate can prove uncooperative. After all this, I don't know how we can be sure when things are right, but I'm looking forward to finding out. 


And somehow, reading (and re-reading) those words feels more like hearing the advice of an old friend, of someone who understands the struggle, of someone who truly believes succeeding matters to you for more than the income or the status, but for the condition of your well-being, of protecting and cultivating the person that you are. With that, Mr. Jobs becomes Steve, a legacy to be retold, and the words hang fast with a steady echo of the ones I remember most: Don't settle. Don't settle.  


And we won't.

Year 25.

As far as inspiration goes, and whether or not it comes in waves or merely trickles steadily on, this past week I was lucky enough to get a mountain's worth, an overflow, a beacon flame in the dark. It would be fair and accurate to state that I haven't been feeling up to the challenges I encounter, even less so lately. And turning certain corners to find myself face to face with the fact of time is something I trained myself to fear, not anticipate. To dread, even. Another year gone by, even a month, a week, a day, is suddenly more passage that suddenly demands my intentions, that wants to know if I've made the most of what's before me, if I've achieved my goals and carried on.

One of the things people will never tell you about goals is that self-motivation is only a mere sliver, one tiny particle, the smallest element in any concoction. Yes, it's what sets everything off, or in place, or makes the world go round and round. It is the largest necessity yet with the smallest of influences, and still nothing would get along without it. But (because you knew there would be one), it isn't everything. All the motivation and list-making in the world won't change, well, the world. Waiting for everyone else to get on board is the tricky part, and the weary part, and the thing that makes our hearts tired, our minds twisted, and our inspiration flicker. It's the catch-twenty-two of all things, and even knowing so won't stop us from falling towards the lure, of giving in, of shrugging our tired shoulders as if to say, so what, it's not that bad. 

While I have yet to reach that state of melancholy, because (I'm finding this will be the politest possible way to say this) there is no chance in hell I could ever feel any satisfaction, whether initially or over time, when a green apron and a wailing siren are involved. Still, there is truth when I admit it has become more difficult to keep my head up against this storm in which I've been standing. Some days are less aggressive, some days I have no idea how I'll make it out intact. Today, I'm drenched, but I can keep up. 

What I've found to be the biggest support that creates the greatest good is having anyone around you, in your life, before you or behind you, who believes you are capable of the things you want. It doesn't take much to lose your own faith in your abilities, in your own self. Personally speaking, one wrong move, one more rejection shot, one more someone-else-got-there-before-me, and suddenly I'm sitting outside during my lunch break, sobbing on the phone, speaking incoherently, mascara everywhere. It's the goddamn truth, it is. While I must admit we all may need a moment like that every now and then, if for no other reason but to remind us of our craziness, to reground us temporarily, what would be better is if we could, despite the surroundings, remember what we are good at, what we can achieve, what we label, in glitter paint and glue, as our strengths. 

That way, when the clarity becomes the hazy, and we're sure that there is nothing else for us, we have those nearby to re-guide us to where we've gone off track, to remind us of what our tantrums have made us lose sight of, to gently chide us, to shove us towards what we're meant for, to forgive us for forgetting. They understand our frustration, they know how forcing patience bends us to discomfort, they agree that the other factors should hurry along, should catch up to what we wish was already happening and make this transition smoother, more bearable, faster. 


So with another notch on the wall, another year of wandering about to add to my written repertoire, to chalk up on the board of my life experience, I find, without hesitation, that I have not wasted one minute. How do I know? Circumstances aside, or imagining them differently, doesn't take away from what I DO have, the invaluable things, the things that people long for all their lives. Would I tweak a few things here and there, would I add a new backdrop or blur some lines, sure. Are things like I imagined they would be at 25, or at all, for that matter? No; but then again, they never are. Changing my job won't change my life. It could improve it, and make no mistake, I'm not giving up. But what I have now, the big and small pieces of my life that create me, support me, hold me fast, those things at the heart of the matter, where it means the most, are where I truly find my happiness. It's my constant choice, one we have to make in spite of, not because of. If we're basing our joys on what surrounds us, the list goes on and on of reasons to cross our arms in a huff, hate everything, and refuse change. So if we can't have things in the timing we desire, the least (AND most) we can do is celebrate the aspects of our lives we're already lucky to have. It's important, it will fuel us, it will bring us closer to what we want, it will guide us. Probably in a different way than we think is best, probably through darkness and peril and times of loneliness. In the end, though. Wherever the end is, whatever labels we've acquired, skills, experiences, losses, it is all that we are. Forgetting that for just a second would be the waste. Wishing to undo what we've gone through, what challenges us daily, would be a lot less interesting, a lot less motivating, a duller version of the lives we're blessed to lead. It's not perfect, nor will it ever be. But it is very, very good.  

A fantastic print, which I will aim to live by, that was given to me by my love.