It was 10:37 am on a sunny Tuesday San Antonio morning. I had once again found myself wandering far outside of my preferred nouveau riche hood, wandering aimlessly in the middle of nowhere, somewhere in the middle of the south side of this city that I have come to absolutely loathe over the 14 years I have lived in it, desperately searching for a Starbucks, while waiting my next required ‘face to face’ meeting.
Good Christ why can’t people in this backwards berg get the fact that we live in the 21st fucking century? Why is understanding simple technology something I get so much unnecessary pushback on?
As I plugged in the search into my GPS to find the closest crackhouse-o-caffine to me, my trusty smartphone didn’t let me down. Although, I couldn’t help but know and remember how many people I have encountered over my 14 year stint in this city full of willfully ignorant who can’t even figure that simple shit out...which annoyed me even more.
Although, when I reached my destination, my mecca of mocha, I could do little more than let out a sarcastic plated gaffaw. The fucking building was PINK.
And I don’t mean in the cheesy island sense of the word that could be somewhat charming if it was in the middle of the Bahamas pink, I mean like a Pepto Bismol bottle threw up on it and called it home sort of pink.
But in the name of all things Pumpkin Spice, I powered through.
I drug my tired bones out of my car, went inside and began my moment in time on the observation deck of life. That’s what we writers do, you know….we watch the rest of you; so we can decide whether or not you are interesting enough to immortalize in the written word.
Sadly, no one was that day.Just like so many days before that day that felt as if they were set on a level of “Ground Hog Day” repeat. On yet another day of “blah” in the most backwards thinking city in the free world, I am sure. A day just like a million others spent in the 14 years, in this sleepy little bass-ackwards berg that has been plagued with small time, small thinking, backwards business that has literally set my teeth on edge since arriving here in late 2001.
And there I sat, in the midst of a pink Starbucks, full of backwards thinking people, listening (okay, eavesdropping) to more small time small talk and legitimately useless conversation that I began to ponder exactly where the fuck my life went wrong to land me here, right now?
The answer was clear. I settled.
Once upon a time, I was in the midst of fast paced, fast forward Yankee thinking. Even when I was in a hopelessly backward one horse section of upstate New York, people still wanted to be on the cutting edge of whatever cut the edges of the time.
And then there was San Antonio.
The slowness, the stifling laissez faire attitude of people in this city was something I once thought I could adapt to, perhaps even embrace.
I was dead wrong.
Try as I might, for over 14 years, I still can’t shake the fact that I settled here...and I hate it. Every second of it, in fact.
When your mind is larger, your dreams bigger than your confined physical realm, it can be absolutely suffocating. It IS absolutely suffocating.
So, you sit there, in the middle of a pink Starbucks and you wonder where exactly where your life went wrong.
And the answer is clear. You settled.
You, somewhere along the way, lost your much-ness. And now, you have to fight to get it back. Because without your much-ness, you’re not much of anything at all.
Of course, your pink Starbucks could be damn near anything. It could be a bedroom, a living room, a kitchen, a local eatery...it could be literally anywhere that makes you wonder when exactly settling in your life became the norm instead of who you really wanted to be before the world fucked that up for you; that moment you realize that you tucked your tail in between your legs and just gave up on everything you really wanted in favor of what made sense at the time; and why you did it.
Then?
It’s that moment in a proverbial pink Starbucks that you stare straight into the face of your pink elephant: The moment you gave up.
And then? You get mad. You get REALLY mad. Because if you’re mad enough, you’ll be passionate enough to fix it.
Passion fixes things.
It just...does.
And lack of it allows things to wither and die.
Or worse….settle.
Where was YOUR pink Starbucks? And what are you going to do about it?
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