Weakness in Seattle

I remember a recurring question from the days when I was filling out college applications or doing pre-interview job screenings at big, impersonal companies: what’s your greatest weakness?

I would always answer: “Impatience.”

Admittedly it’s a pretty glaring humblebrag. “I’m so motivated and driven that I just can’t wait to do something awesome, accomplish the next big thing, check this over-my-head box and move on, so let’s get going!” 

It seemed like such a good answer. So much strength masquerading as a vulnerability.

When I try to peel back the layers of the last year and a half, I start to think that my humblebrag weakness might be at the core of it. I was so impatient to be done figuring out that part of my life. Where was this person, so late in showing up, who was going to swoop in, sweep me off my feet, and check that box of Forever? I was tired of waiting. I didn’t want to do it anymore. And then BANG – there he was. All charm and charisma and certainty. Just like in the movies (both of the Hallmark variety and the cautionary tales you don’t watch all the way to the end).

And because he was so much older, I was going to get to (or have to) skip a lot of other steps, too. Any question of ever having a family of my own. Figuring out where we were going to live. He knew when and where he was going to retire, and of course I’d go too. I didn’t talk much about my vague notion of continuing my job from afar – working remotely will be fine, I don’t have to stop what I’m doing if I don’t want to, there’s a way to keep that part of me going… The specifics we could figure out later. What mattered was that those boxes were checked and it was time to move on.

The general blur of that fast-forward button from 37 to 57, in the moment, felt kind of awesome. Now it feels scary. Scary that it happened. Scary that the false sense of certainty it gave me is gone.

Ever since November I’ve been terrible at sitting still. I could feel myself getting frustrated more quickly; more prone to snap at everyone from check-out people to colleagues to uber drivers – can’t we just hurry it up and get there already? Not good. I was aware of it so I could stifle it – but I couldn’t stop it. Because the thing I was most impatient with was my mind. The way it swirled and spun and hurled me back in time and refused to effing focus on whatever I was looking at in the moment. All I could see was something that wasn’t there anymore. An idea of a life silkscreened over the real thing.

So I took a great (non-medical) friend’s advice: “Do you know why, in the old days, dentists used a piece of string to tie a rotten tooth to a doorway, then they slammed the door to yank it out? Because the shock of the door slamming made the person forget how much the extraction hurt. Maybe you need to shock yourself out of this with a bigger shock to the system – why don’t you just come to Seattle?” Reasonable enough analogy. So…I did.  

Reji. Not a dentist.

I’m one week in. And in the span of this week I’ve gotten a lot of wonderful notes and good counsel from friends encouraging me to breathe deep, take it day by day, and enjoy the adventure as it comes and goes in all its unpredictable ways. Their shared thesis: be patient.

I’m trying. Being in a place where you have three friends is a good test, because there’s lots of downtime. And paying for a mortgage and a rental has stopped me from buying more plane tickets whenever I feel fidgety. There are plenty of little distractions to be had. I go for lots of walks along Lake Union and bounce from coffee shop to coffee shop with my laptop. I use up a disproportionate amount of energy walking to the grocery store and to the CVS because I always turn in the wrong direction and it takes me a while to notice it. But I spend a lot of my time – unlike when I was at home – trying to be patient with my mind.

A few things have happened while I’ve been sitting around attempting it:

I had the idea for this mediocre blog post!

I wandered by a boathouse on one of my walks and started wanting to row again, for the first time in three months. Yesterday I did. Toe-ing a quad on a lake I’ve never been on before as powerboats, visiting crews on the wrong side, and sea planes (those are new) zipped by, the coach shouting names of buildings I’ve never heard of to help me get my point.

I sat in my little rented room on my third day here, feeling overwhelmed by a wave of sadness. And instead of panicking and booking a flight home (I thought about it) I took some deep breaths. I told myself that I’ve been given a handful of weeks to experience a new city that’s right outside my door. I thought about the gorgeous path three blocks from my place that runs the entire circumference of the lake. I put on my new running shoes (Brooks headquarters are right here, what do you want from me) and headed out.

I started running and so did my mind. I thought about him and the last time we were here together. My knee kind of hurt, did I get the wrong kind of shoes? How the hell do so many people afford yachts? Shit, that bridge is further away than I thought. Everyone bikes around here, maybe I need a bike. I didn’t send that email before I left, as soon as I get back I have to…crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch. It was the sound of the gravel under my feet. A couple miles in I started to hear it. I liked the rhythm of it. A slow metronome that became my running buddy for the next four miles. In those miles my mind stopped jumping. I looked up from the road and out at the skyline and I could see it for what it was – beautiful. Lit up by springtime sun that hadn’t set yet. Right there in front of me, steady and certain. I liked looking at it in the distance. I liked hearing the crunch of my feet as I got a little closer to it step by step. I didn’t try to speed it up. 

My yoga instructor would call it being present. My pop-Buddhism books would say it’s abandoning the struggle and surrendering to what is. Or something.

I’m going to call it patience. Like any strength or weakness, at the root of it there’s a muscle. One that I really want to keep working on out here. A good goal for week two.