Game, Match, Lock

Let me tell you about the world we live in. It's chaotic. It's a game of bumper cars, every person out to achieve their own agenda. Nothing wrong with that, but if you've ever been at a carnival playing bumper cars, you know how it goes. You're on your way to bump your friend, right in the middle of that exciting, lived interaction, and you get bumped. Sometimes hard, sometimes soft. Sometimes the force transfers to others, especially if you're stuck. Sometimes you're in the middle of a pileup, you at the center, pushing one way while everyone else pushes another. So you reverse, then go forward again. Sometimes you turn the wheel. Sometimes you sit and laugh because nothing is working. Sometimes you're just frickin' annoyed. And sometimes you get bumped so hard your head cracks the seat behind you and you're sure you've got whiplash.

And it doesn't stop if you just sit there.

Which rink is your pileup?

That's the part people miss. Sitting still doesn't take you out of the game. The bumps keep coming. The force still transfers. You just stop being the one who decides where you go; everybody else decides for you, one hit at a time. Being still isn't safe. It's just being stuck while pretending it's someone else's fault.

I know that pileup, because I lived in it for years. Stuck in a job I didn't want. Stuck in a financial freefall. Stuck in a difficult marriage. I was stuck in a life I hadn't really chosen so much as ended up in, one reasonable-sounding decision at a time. I was bumped here, shoved there, with force coming from every direction, and I was in the middle of it, certain that if I just held still, it might settle down.

It didn't settle down. It never does. So I started to move. And here's what nobody tells you about moving: it doesn't get you out of the rink. It just puts you back in control of the wheel.

I'm still stuck. I'm stuck working toward what I actually want now instead of away from it. I'm stuck in a financial freefall, slower, maybe, but still falling. Stuck in the grind of trying to do more, be more, and build something. Stuck in the search for what comes next. Same word. Same freefall, even. But now I'm the one steering into it, and it turns out that's the whole difference. The bumps didn't stop. I just stopped letting them decide my direction.

Somewhere in there, the stuck stops feeling like a rink and starts feeling like a lock. Old, rusty, the key won't turn. You can't see what's on the other side of the door. You can't stand there studying it until you're sure. All you can do is work the key, back and forth, small amount of pressure one way, a little the other. Sometimes you throw some WD-40 in it and wait. You're not turning it cleanly toward a future you can picture. You're loosening the rust enough to move.

And the reason the lock is rusty in the first place is the rink. All that force, all those years of getting bumped and holding still and letting it corrode, that's what seizes the thing up. You don't get a clean lock in a quiet hallway. You work it in the middle of the pileup, getting hit while you turn.

I'll be honest, a lot of my moves were wrong. I freed up money and spent it on the wrong thing. I paid off debt and rebuilt it. I took on more when I should have taken on less, and my body paid the price. It was wrong move after wrong move. But standing still was the only move guaranteed to fail. The wrong ones at least kept the lock working. And eventually, not on my schedule, not cleanly, one of them turned.

That's what I want you to hear, if you're pinned in a pileup of your own right now, sure that being stuck means you failed at something.

You didn't. Stuck isn't the failure state. It's the normal one. There's no version of the game where you get permanently unstuck and coast out of the rink. Open one lock, and there's another door, another rusty lock, and another pileup forming on the far side of it. I used to think that was the worst news. Now I think it's just the news. It is the shape of a life, not a single lock from which you escape, but an entire corridor of them, and a rink that never powers down.

So the question was never "How do I get unstuck?" That question has no answer, because the premise is wrong. The real question is smaller and harder: am I still turning the key and steering the wheel, or am I sitting still, getting bumped, and calling it everyone else's fault?

Those are the only two options. Not stuck versus free. Moving versus sitting.

I don't know what's on the other side of the door I'm working on right now. I've never been there. I can't see it, and I've stopped pretending I need to see it before I'm allowed to move. I just know the lock's still turning, a little more each day, and the wheel's still in my hands.

You'll always be stuck somewhere. That's not the trap.

The trap is deciding that the lock in front of you is the one you stop turning, and letting the rink push you around while you tell yourself you're just sitting this one out.

So turn it. Steer into it. You don't have to see where it goes. You just have to work the rust until it moves, drive through, and get ready for the next bump.

That's not the end of the road. That's the road.