Musings From The Shitter: Volume Twenty Three

Theres no story, just this.

Some nights it hits like a warm hand on your shoulder…gentle, familiar, and completely unexpected.

Not a revelation. Not a mental health “breakthrough.” Just...calm. The kind that creeps in sideways, in between two sips of something warm or bitter, when no one’s asking anything of you and nothing hurts, and the present moment somehow...against all odds…doesn’t feel like a place you’re trying to escape from.

Let me explain.

I’m 45. I have a wife who loves me enough to worry. Two daughters who love me in ways I’m still learning how to receive. And a brain that, for most of my adult life, has been hell-bent on convincing me that I’m either:
a) not doing enough,
b) not doing it right,
or c) already too late.

And most nights, I manage that noise with motion: pacing, fiddling, stepping from couch to kitchen to shed and back again...chasing the illusion of doing something, when really, I’m just trying to stay ahead of the stories. You know the ones. The ones about who you were supposed to be by now. The futures that haven’t happened but still haunt you like regrets.

And then...this one night...I heard it: laughter.

From inside the house.

My girls, laughing. Not performative, not polite, not “Dad, you're so funny” laughter. The real kind…high-pitched, breathless, completely uncontrolled joy that only kids and the truly free are capable of. And it cracked open something in me.

And I was gone.

Not metaphorically...neurologically. Back on the driveway of my childhood home. Five, maybe six years old. In a busted old pram, being hurled around by my older brother in what we loosely called “stock cars.” He’d push me over bumps and into tree stumps and curbs while I screamed with joy, completely convinced I was in control.

It wasn’t a memory. It was a re-feeling. A full body, multi-sensory flashback that somehow calmed me instead of unspooling me.

That’s when it hit:
Maybe this is what calm really feels like.
Not numbness. Not stillness.
But a pause in the future-story. A quiet rebellion against the anxiety machine.

There’s something sacred about that kind of calm. The kind you don’t earn, or fix, or hustle toward. It just shows up. Usually when you stop looking for it. Usually when your brain is too tired to resist it. And the trick, I think, is not in chasing it…but in noticing when it happens.

Because life is often just noise. But in the spaces between…the accidental silences, the laughs, the hugs, the still moments...that’s where we catch a glimpse of who we are without the pressure to become someone else.

Sometimes, that glimpse is something tiny. Like noticing my middle nail is still chipped blue from when I painted them last week...a little rebellion against the grayscale of middle age. No occasion. No meaning. Just something I did because it made me smile.


And that’s the point, maybe. A quiet “fuck it” to the narrative that adulthood is supposed to be muted and linear.
Some joy is only visible in colour.

And then there are moments when you get a real life test of it all.

Like, Monday.


We were supposed to meet up with old friends...the kind of friends who were around when your skin was younger and your jokes were worse and you hadn’t yet grown into whatever mask you wear now. They were back in New Zealand. We'd all been looking forward to catching up at least, I know I had. 

And we forgot.

Totally forgot.

Then came the message:

“Are you guys coming?”

FUCK.
You know that feeling. The body clench. The instant mental theatre of invented excuses. Lies queued up just in case we needed a script. I didn’t want to lie, but I still mentally reached for the folder.

My wife looked at me, and I knew she was in the same state.

And then something happened that I’m starting to believe is actually what growth looks like...not a big epiphany, not a perfect comeback...just a small, honest act:

I messaged back:

“No lies. We forgot. But we’re on our way.”

And we went.
I was exhausted. Mentally, physically, the kind of tired where bed is more than just sleep...it’s safety. But we went.

And you know what met us? Hugs.

Not polite ones. Real, bone deep, "we’ve lived together" hugs. Hugs that undid all the future stories I had already told myself about how awkward it would be, how ashamed I’d feel, how maybe they’d be cold or distant or secretly judging.

But the hug shut all that down.
And I was reminded...again...that presence is its own redemption.

That being honest with people you trust is one of the last real acts of freedom left to us.

And the night? It was lovely. Unremarkable in the best way. We laughed, told stories, remembered versions of ourselves that feel like ancient cousins now. And I gave myself something I wouldn’t have had if I’d stayed in the duvet, or worse...sent one of those carefully prepared lies:

I gave myself calm.

That’s what I’m learning: the stories we tell ourselves about how much we’ve messed up are rarely true.

And more importantly, we can choose the moment over the myth. Over and over again.

Of course, the wall comes back.

That wall we all hit when the future stories return. The ones where you fail, or lose everything, or never become the person you think you’re supposed to be. The wall where joy evaporates and duvet covers become hideouts. I used to call it depression. I don’t anymore…not because it isn’t, but because I’ve stopped pretending it’s separate from the rest of me. It’s part of the weather now. Some days are fog. Some days are lightning. Some days are a soft chair and a cup of coffee that tastes like a miracle.

Here’s the rough math I’m working with these days:

  • Kid joy = Adult calm
  • Memory = Time travel
  • Laughter = Presence
  • Death = Context, not punishment
  • Painted nails & weird shirts = Permission slips
  • Football = Low-key therapy
  • Friends = The only real currency

And maybe this:
You don’t need to have a future figured out to feel peace.
You just need to hear the laughter…and let it move you.

Because joy doesn’t live at the end of some perfectly plotted life.
It lives in a pram on a driveway.
In a last minute dinner with friends.
In a dumb joke that makes no sense but makes everyone laugh anyway.
In showing up even after forgetting.

You’re not behind.
You’re not broken.
You’re just waking up.

Let it happen.

No 10 point plan.
No “how to win at life.”
Just some words thrown on paper by someone having fun trying to make sense of it all. Watching the sparks. Following the warmth.

If you’re 45 and wondering if you’ve fucked it all up
If you’re 25 and already tired
If you’re 65 and thinking about painting your nails

The moment is still here.
And so are you.

Welcome.

 


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