The Light Beside The Tunnel

Bridge Reflections by cadoblis

Sometimes you don’t need to reach the end of the tunnel to see where the light is.

For me to bother, at times like these, to write anything at all is, in itself, a feat. Let’s see if I got this right: I don’t feel like trying to tell stories that, dripping from the tips of my wandering fingers, would have the slow, cadenced pace of slave chants or the mercy songs to some god of the disheartened—when the real issue isn’t disheartenment, or depression, or even lack of motivation.

(OK, there is certainly some lack of motivation from not being able to do what I want, but half of that is a circumstantial factor and the other half a conscious decision to keep myself below the radar at a time when I’d clearly be rowing against the tide.)

But the pattern holds—the subliminal message people pick up when they interact with me again, the remarks from a long-time friend (oh, how corny the phrase old friend sounds in Portuguese in the feminine—a tiny snag in this simultaneous translation process that is my writing), the cracks from Marco (yes, that one, for those who know him) at the last lunch: That I am too quiet, that I lack space, that I deserve better, that I need to change. Deep down, that I need a challenge worthy of me.

I agree.

I miss something that, more than putting my fingers to drum on tabletops or race across the keyboard, gives me a valid, coherent and electrifying reason to get up in the morning and go to the office—to spend nights truly awake, and not in a trance of possible futures I try to sketch inside the very narrow tunnel where I keep inching forward.

And I know that saying this is an invitation for fate to snare me again in half a dozen pseudo‑responsibilities that are (I realize at once, scarcely fifteen minutes in) things nobody else wanted to do and that will be handed to me the moment I even hint I’m not satisfied.

So be it. I suppose what other people understand as professional satisfaction isn’t the same as what I do, and this kind of misunderstanding must happen every day.

So tomorrow, when I get there, I’ll curse Mondays, the full Inbox and trouble tickets about trivial issues, have a coffee, hit Play and simply do what I must.

I have changed quite a bit, in fact.