Unpack Your Boxes Already!

For far too long they remained packed together in moving boxes that traveled with me from apartment to apartment and house to house.  Enigmas that were to remain untouched and cherished from afar.  Would I ever be able to unravel their mysterious ways?  Maybe someday.

I'm talking about my Rubik's Cube and my fiction.  In the box, my "manuscripts" sat amongst several Stephen King books and my cube.  The cube was already solved, but only because I had cheated and popped it apart with a screwdriver.  However, I had no screwdriver to pop apart King's stories.  I didn't have the tools to cheat at writing.

Without any shortcuts or cheat sheets, my writing remained untouched in the box as if it were paralyzed by the greatness of its box mates:  the Cube and the King.

After one too many failed New Year's Resolutions, I finally unpacked the box.  If a three year old can solve the Rubik's cube and a four year old can publish a novel, then maybe I can figure out a way to do this too.  Maybe it was a Nike ad I had seen that made my subconscious whisper, "Just Do It".  I don't know, but I was inspired.

I'm not saying that self doubt disappeared and made me ready to accomplish anything.  But I was somehow freer knowing that I didn't have to be the first or the best.  It was too late for that anyway.  However, that was the day I would start to mark milestones in my own life.  Dreams don't simply burst out of the box of potential and automatically make us successful and admired.  No, I had to get on with the "doing" myself.

It was okay that I would never get to every possible twist and turn of the cube.  It was okay that I would never become a master like the King.  It didn't matter.  The cob webs were wiped away because I had unpacked the box.