Sitting on the subway, I usually can be found staring at my phone or mindlessly people watching. It’s one of my favourite things to do as I commute around the city. To look around the subway car and give backstories to the people around me.
I wonder if they create these fictions featuring me as well. I hope I’m a good person in their versions of me based solely on the expression on my face or how I look today. We all have our own ways to get through another long ride home.
Tonight I had a sudden epiphany as I stressed over editorial calendars and brand deadlines that had come and long gone. With a sense of worry looming over my head and a pit in my stomach when I realized how late it was and I wasn’t even home yet, it dawned on me… I hadn’t written for me in a long time.
I hope that you don’t read that with malice or disdain, because every single day I am grateful for the life I live and for you reading this. Every monumental point of growth this blog has achieved, once a tiny dream, I now proudly wear as a badge of honour. But amid the staff, somehow still balancing a full time day job, and demands for content knocking on the door… where had Daniel in “Do The Daniel” gone?
I have a hard time asking for help. It’s one of my biggest flaws. Some days I realize that under the mountains of work and all the praise that comes with what I have given life to in this “brand”, there is still a man. Just a man. So no. I don’t know how I do it either. I appreciate you asking, but I still don’t have an answer to that question.
But don’t worry. I’ll give you a witty response and make you smile, because in my mind I treat you the way I would want to be treated. When I talk to you, I look you in the eyes. When I say “let’s have dinner”, I actually mean it. I hate liars and people who are in this world only for themselves. The worst person on the planet is a selfish one.
I digress. But I do that in this head of mine as I stare into the subway car. Mine is one of those brains that doesn’t turn off. Another flaw perhaps? But I get a lot of shit done. Is that a positive? I’m drawing a blank when it comes to answering that question these days. I blame the lack of sleep.
I love my life. I would tweak a few things. But I would never change it. Maybe a few pounds lighter. Maybe finally write the book I’ve been working on for what feels like an eternity. I’ve lived too many lives at 32 to want to start over again and this one is pretty amazing.
I hope that as I’m feverishly jotting this down in some strange moment of inspiration in a notepad app on my cell phone that I remember to do this again more regularly.
Because even if not a single person ever reads this, this is me. This is Daniel. This is the man that genuinely loves to write and create and feel. This is why I started this after all.
Sometimes I hope like this iconography that sits in front of me, that as I age, I do not depreciate in value. That I can be considered beautiful for the weathered lines on my face and the softness in my eyes that comes from many tears and moments of uncontrollable laughter. I believe that the eyes are the only way to know someone. If you don’t look me in the eyes, I feel like you’re hiding something.
Sometimes I wonder what tomorrow holds and I get so wrapped up in trying to plan it away. But there will be moments in my life that I can’t control. To give myself to reckless abandon and come what may, keep my head high. This has been a rough week for me. Next week will be better.
Thanks for reading and always supporting me.
Daniel