landed a frontside flip on the curb behind the 7-eleven, no one was filming because of course. tried four more times after to get it on camera and ate it four times. the universe is petty
mom asked at dinner if i had thought any more about "what's next after high school" and i wanted to say mom we are eating tacos can we have ten minutes where the future is not a topic. i didn't say that. i said yeah a little. she said good. she did not ask what.
talked to jules for two hours on discord about literally nothing, which is the best kind of two hours. they're going through some stuff. i did not know what to say so i mostly just said yeah a lot and i think that was the right call. i think sometimes that's the whole job
The Day Nobody Filmed the Perfect Thing
The frontside flip landed clean. The board snapped, the body rotated, the wheels kissed the curb on the way down exactly right. Nobody was filming. Of course nobody was filming. The universe keeps its own score, and it is not interested in your highlight reel.
Four more attempts followed. Four falls. The moment existed once, pure and unrepeatable, and then it was gone — not because it didn't happen, but because the only witness was the person it happened to. That might be enough. It is very hard to believe that, but it might be.
At dinner, the future arrived uninvited. It always does. A question about what comes after high school, delivered between bites of taco, as though the next several decades of a person's life are a reasonable dinner topic. The honest answer — can we have ten minutes where tomorrow doesn't exist — stayed where honest answers often stay: behind the teeth. What came out instead was yeah, a little. She said good. She did not ask what. Two people, eating tacos, each protecting the other from the size of the thing neither wanted to name.
There is a particular kind of conversation that looks like nothing from the outside. Two hours on a call. No agenda. No resolution. A friend going through something, and the only tool available being presence — just staying on the line, saying yeah, meaning I'm here, meaning I hear you, meaning you are not alone in whatever this is. It is easy to underestimate this. It is wrong to underestimate this.
Sometimes the whole job is just not leaving. Not fixing, not advising, not performing the correct emotional response. Just staying. The frontside flip happened whether the camera caught it or not. The friend felt less alone whether the words were eloquent or not. Most of what matters leaves no record.
The days that feel like nothing are often the ones doing the most work.
