It’s Not Quite Sunset

and the sky is making promises

It’s warm now, and the hedge roses are in bloom.
Even through the haze of Canadian wildfire smoke, they still manage to smell sweet - tenacious little things. It’s not quite sunset, but the light has started to soften, and the sky is making promises.

I’m on the porch again. Barefoot. Coffee gone cold.
The kind of quiet that doesn’t demand anything.

I used to sit like this because I was tired.
And I still do.
But now I sit because there’s something here that doesn’t show up when I’m moving too fast to notice it.

You might not have a porch.
You might be in the middle of dinner, kids yelling, email blinking,
some hollow god in your pocket begging for your attention.
Maybe it’s okay.
Maybe it’s not.
But it might be what is right now.
I’m not here to offer you a plan,
but maybe a few thoughts.

When I was in the middle of it,
I didn’t need someone telling me
“Here are the ten steps to reduce the stress in your life.”
I needed something quieter.
Something that didn’t try to fix me.

But if any part of you feels like you’re chasing something you can’t name,
or like maybe everything’s too loud to hear yourself think - 
you’re not alone.

This isn’t a teaching. It’s just what I’ve noticed:

I’ve been through it all.
Career, kids, houses, big dreams - the whole mess.
It was my life, and I had to navigate it.
You have your life, and you have to navigate yours.

You might think you don’t need to hear from someone who now has time
to sit on the porch and name birds by their songs.
And I get that.

But maybe I wish I could go back and tell myself:

You don’t need to become a monk.
You don’t have to escape to the mountains
or bury your name in a silence retreat.
But you might want to look closer.

Look in the cracks.
The little ones that appear between errands and expectations.
That second between finishing a task and reaching for the next one.
The silence that follows a slammed door or a long-held breath.

No one talks about those moments.
Because they don’t make noise.
They don’t perform well.
They don’t fix anything.

But something lives in there.
Not peace, maybe.
But a kind of truth that’s harder to lie to.

I didn’t know to look.
I was busy.
I was proving something.
I was afraid of what would happen if I stopped moving.

And if you want to go full-blown radical -
grab a cushion off the couch
and sit on it.
Just five, even two minutes.
Nothing but breathing.
Nothing but being.

I now sit.
Not because I’ve solved anything.
But because I finally know there’s something in the quiet worth facing.

This isn’t advice.
This isn’t a method.
It’s just a small flag waving
from the edge of your field of vision.

If you find yourself staring out the window
and you don’t know why—
maybe this is why.

If you have thoughts about this leave a comment, I will read them.