After a year-long hiatus, I’ve decided to start a new series, documenting my attempts at navigating adulthood. These short essays are snapshots of my mind at the cross roads, fleeting moments of fear intersecting with bright bursts of clarity. Never a fan of clichés, I’m consciously stepping away from answering the Big Life questions. Instead, I document tiny thoughts and stories, with the hope that, looking back one day, they will reveal the orbit of personal growth. Secretly, I imagine that orbit to be there all long, like driftless elementary particles meeting each other mid-space and…voila! A perfectly formed planet knowing exactly where it is supposed to go.
It probably wasn’t the best use of time.
In front of me was an open laptop displaying a word document bleeding with feedback. This needs more context. Rewrite this section from the customer’s perspective. Fix the bullet points. It’s always the damn bullet points.
At 10pm on that autumn Monday night, I sat cross-legged in my temporary home for the week – this time, an AirBnB loft in a earthquake damaged building.
A few feet away, two colleagues made themselves home on the comfy sofa. It was the evening before a looming deadline and I was trying to make the best use of a tired brain. An accidental cup of chamomile tea was dulling my exhausted senses, yet with every moment I grew more awake, enticed by a certain atmosphere in the room.
We had been chatting on and off, words escaping our mouths in a mix of debate and stream of consciousness, stretching across boundless topics, at once personal and big picture. An old Chinese proverb describes such conversation as a heavenly stallion soaring across the sky, restless in its freedom and unrestrained in its power.
Wellington’s dusky city lights shone cast a bright yellowish tint on the scaffolding, making the room’s loft in a construction site atmosphere all the more surreal amidst the darkness of the night.
The early autumn air blew a chill into the air. Illuminated by the dim blue, inhuman light of the laptop, I recognised two colleagues who had taken off their day masks and were unabashedly themselves, revealing the parts of themselves normally encased in suits and bantering like kids.
In that moment, I thought to myself, I saw two friends.
Feature image from the talented Mari Andrew.
Musings of a Leaf 
Really love your posts 🙂