The long game.

She says something smells, and it must be me. I sniff at my clothes and she laughs saying, “Did you ever think you’d end up this way back when you were cool?”

She gives me way too much credit.

But no. I didn’t think I’d end up like this. There’s a multitude of good in it. Sometimes, something that passes as news catches my eye when I run at the gym, and I think on how grateful I am. How grateful I should be. But there’s always that bitter lining of reality that’s stitched in the seams. It’s my own foul attitude toward the things that define me whether I should be grateful for them or not.

I suppose that speaks more to who I used to be. A creator of lies I thought I’d one day live. If somebody irked me, no matter. They’d one day witness me winning the Pulitzer Prize and that would surely put them in their place. Why I imagined a nine-year-old would ever be intimidated by a fancy writing award is beyond me. I guess I thought I’d play the long game.

I am not a Pulitzer Prize winner. I did win a gold fish at a carnival once that lived for three years, so I suppose all is not lost. But I’m finding winning isn’t in the bigger things but in the small building blocks of an every day life. One foot in front of the other. One seed planted in a row. Sprinkle it with water, watch it grow.

She shoves her laundry into the open mouth of the washer, and I sniff at myself my again. This time, a little less obviously.