Parallel Synchronized Randomness
Fascinating!
Oh boy, it has been a minute!
Work has been busting my balls – which is a good and bad thing. For the last 2 years, my job has been pretty slow and I’ve really enjoyed that compared to the years and years of crazy retail chaos that came before it. The luxury of typing an email in pajamas is not lost on me. But since March, I’ve been on a very time-sensitive and large project that has taken up most of my days and even brought me to Dallas for an event that pulled my business-casual-ass out of the closet.1
It felt like the front load of my year so far has been just getting my “ducks in a row”. No one tells you when you turn 40, how much more you’ll be doing to the doctor or PT. Between getting my first mammogram, testing my hormones, having a dermatology skin check, going to a PT, and the OBYN – I was a little overwhelmed with the amount of maintenance it takes to stay “healthy” the older you get. Everything for the most part checked out fine – I discovered I have dense breast tissue and my estrogen is low but other than that – in good health.
I am still running! I am doing 3 days a week and trying to get my mileage to about 15 miles/week by the time fall rolls around. I’ll probably have to add another day if I want to make it to that number or lean into the long run. The key is balancing it all with strength training, sometimes I’ll go too hard on that or burn myself out on effort and my legs just can’t do the work I want them to do. I’ve been good about keeping a schedule minus traveling when I let myself de-load for a week or so.
Speaking of travel, Austin and I went to Colorado for the first time this month. It was very windy and colder than we would have liked but we rolled the dice going the first week in May. Overall, it was lovely and of course, we asked ourselves “Could we live here? “like we do everywhere we travel. We’re contemplating the Florida Keys or California for our December trip.
Outside of boring life stuff – I’ve been thinking about parallel synchronized randomness or “PSR”. I don’t know if this is a real phenomenon because I only know about it from the movie, “The Science of Sleep”.
The idea is that people make choices and sometimes those choices match up and we are on the same path without knowing it. What sparked this notion, was my trip to Dallas. Before my flight back home from Dallas, I did the usual walk around the airport and look for snacks, the restroom etc. and I finally get to my gate to wait. While standing I notice a man on his laptop sitting next to me (I am standing) and I notice his wedding ring which for me, is a weird thing to pick up on since I usually don’t register a ring on first glance of a person. I look away and then I look back at him, and he is familiar to me, but he is wearing a baseball hat and looking down. I figure it out very quickly that there is a 99 percent chance that he is my first serious boyfriend (and subsequently the first person I ever had sex with) and he is going to be getting on this flight too. I freeze and play it cool but then decide to shift to sitting in a chair to wait to board the plane. The gate agents start calling out the boarding order – I realize he is in the last group and I am the one right before the last. I hurry to board because I have now decided I don’t have the energy to revisit the past today after my 3-day work event. I board the plane, I don’t see him get on but I am not really looking.
After the flight, I think I saw him briefly around baggage claim – I am almost certain he saw me at the gate in Dallas. Knowing him, I don’t think he’d innate conversation – not because things ended badly – but because it has been over 15 years since we have spoken. It is worth noting, to my knowledge, that he does not live in the same city I do so the odds of him, of all people, being on my flight are unknowable but low.
I wonder now if him being on that flight was some sort of message or sign. It is just so strange how people come in and out of your life even if you never speak to them. I don’t know if I even would need to – there is not much to be said. Perhaps we will meet again. I am itching to send him an email and say hello but also don’t have much to say beyond it. Lack of electronic communication in this day in age is a vacation.
Okay! I think that is it. Holding strong to my no-fantasy 2024 which is probably why this blog has been quiet. If I can’t write about all the things I’ll never do – what is there?? Exactly.
I do not miss being “ON” all the time but I do miss being with people in some sort of collective push to get the work finished.