Somewhere in the middle: the figurative hotel room

 Side note: I was going through my files and found this – something that I was going to put in the book two years ago and decided not to. But perhaps I needed to hear it today.

Two phrases of advice I’ve come to hate:
“Your time will come” and “Wait”

I sat in my hotel room in Little Rock, Arkansas, and pondered what to do. Just a few moments earlier I had gone to get the keys off of the dresser to unload the car, and nothing was there.

And I just knew.

No, they weren’t under the bed. Or in my bag. I knew before I looked what I had done. They were locked in the trunk of my car, along with all of my clothes. And I was in Little Rock, wearing my pajamas, and sitting in a dingy hotel that I had so confidently won with my bid on Priceline. At least this hotel didn’t have the graffiti and prostitutes like the last one. My friends were starting to laugh at my string of hotel-booking blunders – so much so that I had started calling my little booking game “Hilton or Hookers.” This one was somewhere in between. But that’s another story.

I called down to the front desk and explained my situation. They asked if I had looked everywhere. Ummm, that would be a yes. Are you kidding? I thought. I even looked in the fridge! Look buddy, I’m a little OCD, I even looked in the fridge twice. The keys aren’t here.

They told me to wait for their maintenance man before I called anyone, and I sat on my twin-size bed and waited. Minus the bed comforter, of course. I had watched too many 20/20 specials and CSI episodes about what ends up on those things. I waited. I was halfway to my destination on the road, and I waited. And I thought it pretty much summed up my life at the moment.

Halfway to somewhere. Stuck. I knew if it took too long for the keys, I wouldn’t be able to make it to the next city in time, and I might as well turn around and go home. And every second that ticked by spun the question around in my head…keep going, go home? keep going, go home?…..you’re stuck here in the middle in a crummy hotel room, is all of this really worth it anyway? And that’s what had been going on in my head for weeks, to be honest with you.

Most of us, halfway to our dream or to who we want to be, hit a crummy hotel room, figuratively I suppose, and question if this is where we’re supposed to be. I guess I thought I’d be on Oprah four months into my book launch and all of that would just work itself out. I don’t think small – I’ve told you that, right? I think big. And what’s the point of me doing this if this is all there is?

I don’t mind the jumping out. I don’t mind completing the project. It’s the middle part that gets me every time. The waiting.

But that is part of the game. You get the initial adrenaline rush of going after your dreams. You take the leap, you take the plunge. You quit the job or you enter the relationship. And a bit into it the adrenaline wears off. You look around and think “What? What is this? Is this worth what I’m putting into it? Am I going somewhere with this?”

But you regroup, you re-check your priorities. And you choose a direction and keep moving on.

Because that’s what you do. That’s what dream-chasers do. You sit down, take a breath, and then keep going.

You keep going until life blocks the path in front of you. And then you start off-roading. You have to.

How do you know what’s around the next bend? How do you know something great won’t be there? And if you stop now, you’ll never know.

You’ll just never know.

About kindawilson

Kinda is an author, teacher, speaker, entrepreneur, and hopeless wanderer. Her favorite places in the world include Manarola, Italy, and Gimmelwald, Switzerland. In her free time, you can find her bargain shopping and hanging out at coffee shops.