It's My Turn

Nothing Is Permanent, and This Time I Believed It

Every morning, wherever I am, I’m awake before anyone else.

Most days that’s my home office, before the house stirs.

This past week it was a balcony, the ocean instead of a window, half the building still dark.

Same practice. Different room.

What happened once I was awake was the part that hadn’t happened in either room before.

By the second morning it was quiet.

The mind kind of quiet, not the resort kind. No urgency, no to-do, nothing that needed solving.

I sat there and looked at the water and didn’t chew on anything. That’s rare enough in me that I almost didn’t recognize what it felt like.

I want to tell you the beach did that. It didn’t.

The quiet started the week before, in my office: bills automated, feeds cut back, nothing left that could pull at me later.

Here’s what I have to be honest about. I’ve made this decision before.

Other trips, other years, I told myself the same thing: close things out first, leave the noise at home, be present. It never held. I knew, even while I was saying it, that I’d cave by day two.

This time the pull was still there, the same reach for the phone, for my Kindle, the same itch for a podcast, and for the first time I actually let it pass instead of giving in.

A worry about my older son’s living situation surfaced on that balcony. So did something about my younger son’s next step after high school. Work followed, the way it always does.

I noticed each one and said the same three things every time.

Not now. This isn’t helpful. This isn’t the space for us.

I’ve known how to do that in theory for years. Meditation trains exactly this. Tripp Lanier calls it “strength training for the brain,” learning to watch a thought without following it.

I’ve had the theory. I’ve had years of practice, imperfect but real. What I never had, until this trip, was the follow-through to actually use it when it counted.

So the real question isn’t how I did it. It’s why now, after all those other trips where I meant it and still caved.

I built sand castles once, next to parents standing exactly where I stand now, though I didn’t know it then. They’re still here for this.

This time I watched my own kids in the water and saw both things at once. I could see who they used to be and who they’re becoming, none of us getting to see how much longer this shape holds.

I’ve always known, intellectually, that nothing is permanent. This year it stopped being an idea.

It’s my turn. It’s happening to me.

I used to think that was a discipline problem, that I should be able to act on what I know is true without needing the stakes to feel real first. I don’t think that anymore.

My mind is neurodivergent, and it runs on urgency, not on “should.”

Given information alone, I stall. Given something with real teeth, I move.

That’s how my mind works, and fighting it has cost me more than working with it ever would.

I don’t have the balcony this week. But the waking up early travels, home office or balcony, it always has.

This was never really about the room. It was about a fact I’d understood for years finally landing somewhere it could reach me.

What would it take for that fact to actually reach you in your own office, on an ordinary Tuesday, the same way it reached me on that balcony?