I had a moment the other day — one of those moments when the universe revealed a wee little bit of itself to me, and revealed a wee little bit of myself to me. It wasn’t anything I’d call a full-blown epiphany, more like a little… piff.
It happened something like this.
For the span of about 36 hours, beginning sometime on Wednesday and ending sometime on Friday, I thought — quite seriously — about going into debt for a not-inconsiderable sum in order to start a new business. I don’t know what got into me, but an opportunity opened up, like a portal, and off I went down the path of what if.
I love the path of what if. Also known as the path of if only I had thirteen more lives I could do all this cool stuff.
Anyway.
I made some notes, I wrote in my journal, I talked it over with the voices in my head and with my significant others, I got out my calculator and ran some numbers and furrowed my brow over column A minus column B and I thought, Maybe I can do this.
Thought: Maybe I ought to do this.
The universe was kind. It let me sleep on it. Twice. And then it took me by the hand and led me back to reality.
And told me, in its reliable, Voice-of-the-Universe way, that this new business idea was a distraction. Something that slipped into my brain during an unguarded moment. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t what I wanted.
Okay. So I got that pretty quick. But that wasn’t the piff. The piff was what I realized after I realized the business idea wasn’t what I wanted.
The piff was this:
I’ve been putting off buying an new laptop. With all the writing and design work I do, and with three of us sharing a desktop, I’ve needed a new machine of my own for quite some time. But the van had to have a new engine and we needed to buy a fridge and the furnace is getting old and the sofa is totally sprung and you know how it is. A new laptop seemed like an indulgence.
And yet going into debt for $20,000 somehow seemed quite reasonable.
Yeah. I put those two thoughts together and… piff.
Today I went shopping for my new laptop.
Do you think maybe the business opportunity was the universe taking me the long way around to the realization that I need to buy the damned laptop? (Since, clearly, the direct route wasn’t working.)
Yeah, I think so, too.
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On a totally different tangent, I’ve added a little widget for my new zine, Make/Shift, the first issue of which will be available in just a couple short weeks. If you click on the image in the sidebar it’ll take you to a new page that doesn’t say much more than “coming soon”, but I’ll have more details and ordering information up this week or next.
Meanwhile, any piffs — or even full-blown epiphanies — of your own you want to share? Comments, dear reader. We loves them.
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I wonder if the squirrel I’m watching out my window ever decides to blow off the nut-hunting in favor of an afternoon spent lolling around, hanging upside down on tree trunks, scampering across power lines, doing whatever squirrels like doing.
Do birds go for a fly-by every so often, just for the hell of it?
I think they do.
I think non-human animals do pretty much whatever they want. I think they’re designed that way.
I think we’re designed that way, too. We’ve just forgotten what it means to do what we want. We think it means doing whatever.
As in, whatever.
But doing what you want isn’t random. It’s actually pretty purposeful. Which means in order to do what you want you have to know what you want.
Otherwise you’re just… doing.
So, what is it that you want?
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Every now becomes a then.
I know it does.
But when?
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