Don't Try

And then one day you realize you've been sitting at that desk so long you forgot there was a world out there. A real world, a breathing world, fog rolling in off the bay like it always has, like it did before any of us got here with our deadlines and our devices and our beautiful impossible rent.

San Francisco. God. Full of people burning so bright and so alone.

So we walk. A small group of us, six maybe eight, strangers really, out into the hills or down into the canyon or up where the bay opens up and you can see everything and your eyes go soft and something in your chest you didn't know was clenched just opens.

First hour nobody talks. Nobody has to. The trail is talking. The fog is talking. The thing you've been trying to write, the thing you've been trying to build, the thing you couldn't find at your desk. It's been out here the whole time waiting for you to show up and shut up long enough to hear it.

We stop. We write. Sometimes somebody reads what they wrote and it's true in the way that things are only true when you stop trying to make them true.

Then we walk back into the world. Talking now. Different than before.