My wife asked me to run upstairs and grab a recipe off the printer. “A surprise. Don’t look,” she said, when I asked what she was making. Our cat was asleep on the office chair nearby, unbothered. To distract myself from peeking, I scooped her up, grabbed the paper, and delivered it downstairs without looking. Later when I walked into the kitchen and saw her cutting potatoes into thin circles, I knew immediately. Scalloped potatoes. I said it like a question and an answer at the same time.
She had noticed, weeks earlier at my birthday dinner, that I couldn’t stop eating them. She filed that away, found a recipe, printed it out, and made them on a regular Tuesday.
The recipe wasn’t the point. The noticing was. The thoughtfulness behind the act.
Recently, audio messages have replaced much of the texting in my life. My bestie started it, then my wife caught on, and our family group chat is using them too. I love it. I try to keep every single one – they’re like little clips of the people I love.
They are not more convenient. I have a habit of not remembering what I was responding to halfway through, fumbling, starting over, leaving bloopers in anyway. It makes it more authentic, like we’re having a conversation in person, just not always in real-time.
I have another habit of not starting things because I get in my head and become overwhelmed by how I’m going to flawlessly complete a task, no matter how unreasonable that standard is.
Last Christmas my wife and I spotted a deal we couldn’t refuse: A SaluSpa hot tub to take the chill off a harsh snow-belt winter. Turns out there are a lot of things about owning a hot tub I hadn’t considered – whether the outdoor outlets are equipped, what goes underneath it, and where the optimal placement is. I’m not too proud to say that I opened ChatGPT and asked where to start.
Sometimes my thoughts just need to unravel somewhere before they’re ready for anyone else. I don’t think I would have finished my portfolio website, started a blog, or published on HackerNoon if I hadn’t chatted it out first.
It’s the thoughts, (yes plural), that count. One thought alone doesn’t move. One thought leading into another, then another, that’s action. And action is presence. Picking up the device, researching, planning, and sharing are showing up.