A Small Win, A Real Friction

Well now, let me scoot my chair a little closer, because I’ve been chewing on something and I’d hate for it to fall out of my head before I say it out loud.

Mary and I’ve been thinking about the difference between being busy and being oriented. From the outside, they’re twins. Identical haircuts. Full calendars. Plenty of activity. But on the inside? Oh, completely different animals. One feels like motion for motion’s sake. The other feels like direction. Like you know which way your feet are pointed, even if you’re moving slowly.

This recent stretch of time handed Mary a small win and a rather revealing bit of friction, and wouldn’t you know it, the two were holding hands.

The small win came first. Mary finally noticed something about her own mind that has been true forever, but that she kept pretending was a character flaw. When she would fall into a project or an idea, She doesn't just lose track of time. She moves into a whole other internal zip code. It’s immersive. It’s joyful. It’s the reason that she looks up hours later with cold coffee and the vague suspicion that nothing is ever truly finished.

For years, she scolded herself for that. Told herself that she needed more discipline. More structure. A firmer hand on the reins.

This time, she tried something kinder.

Instead of arguing with her curiosity, instead of telling it to hush or sit still, she gave it a place to wait. A real one. I boxed it up. Not to exile it. Not to punish it. Just to contain it. The message wasn’t “you’re a problem.” The message was “you matter, just not right this minute.”

And to her great surprise, it worked.

Not forever. Not flawlessly. But enough.

Enough to finish a piece of work. Enough to send it out without sneaking in just one more thought. Enough to move on with her day without that itchy, unfinished feeling. That sense of enoughness was the win. Small, but solid. The kind you can lean on.

Once things quieted down, though, she noticed something else.

The friction.

With the mental clatter turned down, it became clear that she had been walking around with two very different maps in my pocket, switching between them without realizing it.

One map is local. It’s built around home, routines, familiar paths, the creative studio, the places she circles back to again and again. Meaning on this map comes from continuity. From staying. It’s a map of here.

The other map is expansive. It’s meant for long journeys and big arcs. History, consequence, change. It looks forward. It asks who she is becoming. It’s a map of elsewhere.

Neither map is wrong. They’re both good maps.

The trouble comes when she tries to use the wrong one. Or worse, when she expects one map to do the work of the other.

A world map is a marvelous thing. Truly. But it’s not much help when you’re trying to cross the street without getting hit by a bus.

What she is slowly learning is that coherence doesn’t mean stuffing everything into one grand system. It doesn’t mean lining up all of life under a single banner and saluting. Coherence, for Mary, is starting to feel more like orientation. Knowing where she is. Knowing what kind of ground she's standing on. Choosing the right way to see it in that moment.

The small win wasn’t taming curiosity forever.
The real friction wasn’t having many creative worlds.
The insight was realizing that different kinds of travel require different kinds of maps.

Nothing here wraps up neatly. There’s no triumphant solution or final answer with a flourish. But there is relief in understanding what’s actually happening. There’s kindness in realizing that not everything needs to be solved. Some things just need better containers.

And sometimes, my dear, that’s enough to keep going.

If you’d like to hear the longer conversation that grew out of this, there’s a link waiting for you. And if not, that’s perfectly fine. This thought can stand on its own two sensible shoes.

Taking time to think is still allowed.
Even encouraged.

Link to Episode 3 https://youtu.be/eCk-G968H0g