Meaning > Memories
How a box of toys and a long-forgotten Instagram Reel made me reevaluate my choices
I was eating a Crunchy Taco Supreme in my van when I saw the first snowflake fall. It was distinctly colder when I walked outside just 40 minutes earlier. The air smelled harsher, fresher. Winter is coming. I didn’t know it had already pulled up to the curb.
I was heading to a therapy appointment, where I would struggle to focus as tiny, almost invisible flakes morphed into a full-blown squall outside the windows. I arrived eager, maybe even desperate for a neutral person to help me wade through some muck.1 I knew she wasn’t going to give me answers, but, of course, I secretly hoped. As any good therapist would, she listened to the orange-hot troubles raging wild around me, then turned me inward.
“How do you picture your anger?”
“What name would you give your sadness?”
I am terrible at these questions. She swears there’s no “bad at this.” She patiently rephrases, pauses, pivots. I hemmed and hawed until I mustered the courage to ask, “Can I get the toys?” I have learned it can be helpful to find something tangible to hang our complicated feelings on.
I spent the next several minutes pawing through a shoebox of small, plastic toys. Most of them reminded me of my Happy Meal days, both as a child and as a parent. I located my angry. I located my sad. I held one in each hand.
I awoke the next day, November 1st, to a glimmering world. Despite my misgivings, I’m not sure there’s anything lovelier than snow-frosted autumn leaves on a pink-skied morning.
I surrender.
The week has been a typical cacophony. So much muchness. I’m squeezing in work and I’m squeezing the life from the dregs of this city council campaign. I’m staying up well after my eyes start burning, my tomorrow-self already upset at this self right here who made her bed then resisted sleeping in it. But everyone needs space to just be.
We could all use two more hours… I hate being so cliche… It is what it is…
And then I stumbled on an Instagram Reel I made a year ago but never published. I had forgotten about it. I’m not sure why I took the time to create it but didn’t take the two extra seconds to publish it. My best guess is that thick in book launch mode, bogged down with professional pressure (mostly self-applied), I couldn’t make the case for it. Valuable real estate, flighty attention spans, all that sauce. If it doesn’t sell a book, is it even worth it?
I hit publish and watched it a dozen times over the next hour. 2022 highlights posted in the last breaths of 2023. It felt so long ago, dreamlike. It felt like yesterday.
I am moving at the speed of light these days. It happens. Life lingers too long at the buffet until all we can do is pop that top button and keep going. No shame. Living in the present is important to me and I’m doing my best. But last night was a realization that I haven’t carved out time to process and reflect, and it shows.