Published April 11, 2020
On March 11, deep in a depressed state after an expensive trip to the ER, I decided that I would approach a certain ticking clock, one that seems louder every day, from a different perspective. My words on Twitter — the good, the bad, the ugly — would go away every night, and I would wake up each day to a clean slate. I wanted to shift the way I saw this countdown, not knowing how close it is to zero. Each day would be a fresh start, but with the reminder that everything is temporary.
Since then, I have taken my tweeting less seriously — and more seriously. It has even made me more sanguine about the realization that my carefully considered words — on my website, mainly — will go away soon after I do, and that that’s OK. All of that is fleeting, and I find myself more attached than ever to things that matter. Mostly, people and the love and kindness they give to me.
My one regret is that if I share something that people like, it will be gone the next day. I haven’t quite figured out how to reconcile that with being committed to a clean slate with each turn of the page. It says in my profile that my tweets go away nightly, but who looks at profiles? So I tell myself that this worry is probably due to an overestimation of the value of anything I have to say. It’s all nonsense, mostly. And all I can say for sure is that the countdown feels, to me, much closer to zero.
The fresh start of each morning is a different feeling — like turning “Groundhog Day” sideways, but with me being the one hitting the reset button each night before closing my eyes. The alarm on my phone, my wake-up call, my long-overdue love song to myself, is of course “I Got You Babe.”
It doesn’t start the way it does over and over in the movie, when he’s living the same day again and again. No, it starts the way it does the last time we hear it, on the day when he’s been released from his hell. When I first shared this, I added, “OK, campers, rise and shine!” That’s me. I’m campers. I’m trying not to watch the clock, but there are words from another song in my head, too.
People go just where they will
I never noticed them until
I got this feeling
That it’s later than it seems
Image of open book with blank pages by Vergani Fotografia/via Shutterstock