At coffee with my friend B.,  I listen as she pours out the most delicate stories about all of the creative projects she’s working on and use my sweaty palm to keep my head lifted as she tells me the next step is seeing who wants to produce her stuff, turn them into plays, twist them into TV shows.

And I think about me me me me me me me me me me and how much I’ve struggled with sitting down and using my magic power of huffing and puffing words onto paper and into stories that help me breath a little deeper, help you feel a little fuller, because there’s no guarantee anyone will buy them, publish them, care enough about them, and the years of rejection juxtaposed with a hint of success, and a long walk underneath a pouring cloud of self-pity//self-doubt, make me refuse to spend quality time writing things long enough to put punctuation on them. And that’s when I interrupt B. to ask her a question about me me me me me me.

“Do you ever feel like you’re wasting time working on things that might never go anywhere when the time can be spent, I don’t know, doing something else really valuable.”

And her lips go from straight to squiggly and she responds like a person would respond if they too have spent a journey learning the answer to this question:

“It’s just time. It will pass anyway. Might as well do something you enjoy doing while it does.”

And I think about me me me me me me and my ideas. My unpublished manuscripts and my sticky notes of ideas and I think about reaching over the table, knocking over the coffee, and giving B. a hug. But I don’t. I sit there and listen. I sit there and let an afternoon pass, with a friend, worthy of the time.