January 6 – Afternoon (Loss)
The post new year/Christmas atmosphere is still charged with excitements and greetings of “happy new year” to friends and colleagues you’ve not seen since the new calendar year started.
You know deep within you that it means nothing and nothing is new. After over two and half decades of doing it over and over again, you’d be a fool to not know that it’s all nonsense.
But you’re not a party pooper so you join in the charade that seems to be the order of the day.
Your only wish this time is that that gnawing feeling of emptiness which has led to your loss of belief in anything would finally come to an end. That you would find meaning in this chaos and have an actual reason to look forward to something. Now, that would be new.
July 26 – Morning (Failure)
You toss in bed, thinking of ways to make your day less sucky. The blunder you made yesterday was your fault, no doubt, but you don’t really care.
You’re now way into the second half of the year to know that it’s going to be the same old story at the end of the year. Maybe a bit of progress here and there, but the failures, you could already tell would be at a record high.
But right now, all you could think of is how to come up with an ingenious excuse to miss work. No, calling in sick wouldn’t work for the third time in a week.
You entertain the thought of quitting your job for a moment. What would you do with that freedom? Where would you go? How would you earn?
That’s too many questions than you plan to answer, so you close your eyes, wind the dial on your mental stopwatch and drift into limbo.
December 15 – Evening (Happy Win)
You’ve had a smile on your face for so long that your face is starting to hurt. But you don’t care; for the first time in so long, you are not sad.
Maybe this is what happiness feels like, but you are not going to say it out loud so as not to jinx it. You look around the room and the only thing that looks familiar in it is the same luxury that you’ve seen in the three other rooms you’ve stayed within the last two weeks.
There’s a knock on your hotel door and Lola comes in. You stand up. Wow, she mouths.
“What? Is it too much?” You ask.
Lola laughs, “No, I just can’t get enough of your dapperness. Who knew you could clean up this nice!”
She pats down your shoulders and plants a kiss on your forehead.
“Can I just say how proud I am of you, both as your girlfriend and your agent.”
Now the smile is back on your face, and even wider. “Thank you, Lola. It’s all because of you.”
“Well, you’re an amazing writer, and I just showed everyone that. No one is surprised that you won the award because you deserve it.” she says then steps in beside you and adds, “shall we?”
She’s wearing a wine long gown that makes her look like a movie star. She’s your star, after all.
“We shall,” you say, filling your lungs with the scent of her perfume.
Your head spins.
As you start to walk out of the room towards the dining hall, you remember something your friend once told you, “It’s okay to fail more than you win, but each win must significantly outweigh the sum of the failures before it.”
Now you understand what he was saying.
You think, “I am happy.”
This is new for you and that makes you even happier.
