At nine-fifteen this morning, I was sitting at a coffee shop with my computer open, about to start a day’s worth of work. The weather had been misty since I had arrived home on a Sunday sometime in July. It is no secret that over the last year, or has it been two, time has ceased to move in a way that it once did. Now, large chunks of time will pass with little warning, and sometimes, like at nine-fifteen on a Wednesday at a coffee shop in the suburbs of Boston, the presence of time demands to be known and you become so aware of the goings-on of the present moment. I was brought to the present by the sound of a conversation happening between three older men with thick Boston accents that sat at the table next to mine. They were discussing the ways they had been coping with what could only be described as a period of general and wide-sweeping change. (At this I couldn’t help but ask, does there come a point in each of our lives, especially in a sleepy New England town such as this one, that things stop changing? I could hardly imagine it, but I suppose they call this contentment, or maybe—cynically—complacency. But as these men spoke about their friends who didn’t wear masks, and about their wives, and about work, I wondered when was the last time these men experienced change prior to the pandemic? I digress.)

“My ex-wife tells me I’m a trying guy, and I tell her ‘that’s right, I try my best,” one of the men says to the others. It took me a second to realize the ways in which the word “trying” was being used differently as he spoke. Although, subconsciously, I think I have recently been navigating their distinction in my own life as I continue to figure out the person I want to be.

To be trying is to be difficult, hard to endure. To try is to simply endure to attempt in the direction of forward. What change seems to present is two options, predicated on the difference between “being trying” and simply “trying”. The former is resistant, at times violent. To be trying is to exert effort against change, to push back. The latter is to move with the change, to be swept up in the tide, exerting effort, at times, just to stay afloat, like treading water, allowing the swell to move you, allowing yourself to be moved by the change.

an early iteration of the blog i am continually starting

These days I am trying, to move with the tide, to wade into this time in my life—post-pandemic, post-college—marked by unrelenting change. I’m focusing more on becoming, and less on being. I’m trying to listen more, to judge less, to read and to write and to ask better questions. I’m trying to cultivate a sense of style, one that belongs to no one else. I’m trying to find purpose and to laugh more and to establish a system of values and spend more time with the people I love. I sometimes try to eat healthy and most days I try to go for a run. But some days I have a cigarette, or two, with dinner and some days I can barely get out of bed. These are the ways that I brace myself for what’s to come, the ways I am trying to be more present, the ways I am being in time, and taking up space, and being okay with taking up space.

This blog has been my corner of the world for almost two years now, since I first decided that there were some thoughts I wanted to write down, some recipes I wanted to share, some voice I wanted to let speak. This is my space, and yet I have felt, for so long, unsure of how to move in it, how to define it, how to mark it as my own. Because I think I have been going about things all wrong. Or, at the very least, I have been overthinking. To be sure, I am still just shouting into the void, hoping that something resonates, hoping to make an echo, which I know will, overtime, eventually dissipate into nothingness. So I am starting over, and I invite you, whoever you are, to move with the change. Thank you for your patience. xx

I'm Starting Over