Showing Up

The phone in my pocket rang. So I answered it. It’s what you do.

Jerome. It’s always Jerome, and he starts a conversation with you by finishing first the conversation he was having before he dialed your number.

He’s talking, and I can hear some numbers. They mean something so I latch onto those numbers, but all the while I can see the sail of the Big Southern Butte in the bus window and I’m confused because it means the bus is going the wrong way.

We’re heading home. Which is confusing why Jerome is calling about these numbers, which identify procedures. We’ll get them out, but tomorrow. I’m going home. Except there’s the Big Southern Butte in the window, and that means we’re not going home.

Did Jerome talk to the bus driver and get him to turn around? It’s possible. The butte is rather green – we had a slightly wetter spring than normal. And it is getting closer.

It’s morning.

It’s Thursday morning. Not afternoon, when we’re heading home.

So I stuff the phone back in my pocket. Jerome was probably done talking anyway. And I try to catch a few more minutes’ sleep.

This is adulthood. What so many of the youngsters want.

They can have it. And all the foggy drowsing on a bus, feet pinched again into steel-toed boots, throat dry from coughing during allergy season, and all the other trappings.

My patriarchal blessing says I should learn to do hard things, as doing hard things can lead you to accomplishing even harder things.

Younger Me assumed – and there’s still some of this assumption left – that this meant I’d be able to write the books I want to write.

More often than not, the hardest thing is showing up.

This morning, for example. After ten hours’ of stress over procedures that have to be revised quickly and then published, followed by a three-hour Scout meeting and then five short hours of sleep, the hard part is showing up.

Showing up.

80% of life, so the Internet says Woody Allen says, is showing up.

Sometimes, showing up is this:



That’s what makes us not want to show up at all. I was teetering on that brink this morning.

But we show up.

Because the brinks we teeter on often are of our own making. And products of our imagination. The brink I faced this morning crumbled as I got to work, got done the things I needed – not as expeditiously as you’d hope, but done nonetheless – and life goes on.

Life goes on.

You show up and life goes on.

You don’t show up and life still goes on.

So show up.

I won’t get into a debate about depression. Paranoia gallops through my family, and paranoia is in many ways different sides of the depression coin. Depression may keep you in bed, but paranoia is likely driving me to a grave earlier than most.

This is me. Either one.



Still. Pain and Panic showed up.

Despite the fog.

Despite the thought that, as that butte came closer, that it was the AM, not the PM.

It’s now 11 am. The brink has continued to crumble, with only one more hillock to overcome before I can peacefully drift into the weekend.

I’m glad I showed up today. Shows I can do hard things. Maybe I will get a book written after all. Though there are other hard things looming that I’m not too happy about. But that’s as it goes.