Voicemail to myself on December 15, 2024:

I’m listening to an audiobook by Rob Bell titled How To Be Here and what came to me was this: This moment that I’m in right now is the only time I’ve been in THIS moment, ever.

I’m driving on the 10 in Southern California, probably heading West. I do this often, driving from my desert home to my former stomping grounds. I just did this two hours ago, drove this stretch of highway, and I’m frustrated. It’s unfounded frustration, because there’s nothing I can do about it. I need to get to Orange County and this is the way. I can to accept that I am where I am, and just surrender to the fact that this is where I am right now. (Or I could stay home, pout, and throw a tantrum or stew silently.)

So, I’m driving on this freeway for the second time today in the same direction and I realize that even though I just did this two hours ago, I’m doing it NOW for the first time ever. The sun is in a different location in the sky. Now I’m the driver instead of the passenger, heading to the same destination, but it’s not the same.

Everything in my life that I do, even if it FEELS like something I’ve done before, I am doing right now for the first time. Laundry, phone calls to friends, gardening, walking in my neighborhood.

I was reflecting on Rob’s words, about taking risks and learning from the failures and taking different risks, seeking to find my place. I’ve been struggling with that concept: my place in the world.

I still don’t know, at fifty-nine years old, what I’m “supposed” to be doing. I’m not even clear on what I WANT to be doing, but I know that even if it’s something I’ve done before, this will be the first time I’m doing it as who I am right now. This is the first time that I do the thing I’ve done in the past, in this moment.

Everything that I do, even when it seems like I’ve already done it, I haven’t. Because this moment is a new moment. For example, right now I’m driving past the Cabazon Outlets, which I’ve driven past countless times over the past seven years, and this is the first time I’ve passed the shopping center in this moment. Holiday shoppers are clogging the streets on the frontage road, trying to find a place to park, and while I’ve witnessed this over several seasons, these are different shoppers, or the same shoppers parking in new spots.

So I’m also in the same spot, contemplating what I want to do next with my life, my time. I want the excitement, the butterflies that come from the feeling of fear of uncertainty and also the thrill of territory uncharted. I ruminate over the things I may need to do in order to find the first sentence of my next chapter in life. I realize that right now, in this moment, I am doing the thing, writing that first sentence, taking the next step, in the forward momentum of this vehicle.

I’m doing the next thing I need to do. Into uncertainty.