Whatever happened in the universe today, a small piece of my world snapped back in sync again just like that. Just thinking again about some people I had not seen in months, wondering where they were, suddenly brought them all back out all of a sudden. It felt magical, as if the power of my thoughts were able to will things to happen. A nice experience to keep in mind the next time I need to have some things happen for me, even though this wasn’t something I was needing to happen for me.

Back on February 2nd, I wrote a contemplation on the whereabouts of some people who regularly frequented some places I frequented, who I didn’t know well but who I had not seen in months and wondered what might have happened to them. They had become ghosts to me, visible in their preferred seats while I was there as if they were there, but not really there. In wondering if I should try and find out where some of them might have gone, the ones I had a lead on for doing so, I concluded it was probably best not to because I wasn’t sure their lives were in states that their changes in routine from these frequented places would have been due to good reasons. However, with the passing of time, my curiosity ultimately got the better of me.

On this beautiful, sunny, but cold day after a snowstorm on the cusp of spring, I opted to pass up on one more day of running in winter weather. The warmer weather just hours away. I didn’t need to put up with more winter crap in running. It’s not like I was going to get fat if I didn’t run today. Instead, for my daily exercise, I would just do a long walk to get groceries, and stop for lunch at one of my regularly frequented spots where I thought of some of these regulars’ ghost yet again. I do every time I go there and am there. However, something changed in me today that I let my curiosity of their whereabouts get the better of me to take a detour to where I knew one worked, or possibly had worked, to see if she were there, or if someone could tell me how she was doing if they knew.

At this place where this woman with a celebrity’s second hand wardrobe worked, I was told she wasn’t working today, but that she was ticky booing along just fine, which made me relieved and happy. It was the perfect news to match the weather outside. Whatever had changed in her life that she changed her routines with regards to our commonly frequented place, all was good, and that was all I needed to know.

After getting to my frequented place and ordering my lunch, I turned to walk to the seating area where I normally sat only to be surprised by a ghost I had not seen sitting there for some four months. It was of this lady about whom I had just given in to my curiosity to go inquire about, and it had to be a ghost since coincidences are more for stories and blog posts, not reality! It also had to be a ghost because the image looked like one against the sunny and snowy brightness from outside of the floor to ceiling window by which she sat in her normal spot, and our table when I am there coincidentally. However, my logic reminded me that ghosts didn’t appear during the day, nor in public places, so the image had to have been her, rather than her ghost. Sure enough, when I got there, she was definitely real! Though she reacted to me like she had just seen a ghost!

It was a really fun surprise for both of us to have ran into each other again after all this time. Turns out, she had just committed to getting more sleep in life, as I had this year. She just did it on the weekends to start her weekend mornings later by about an hour, and I had spread mine out more during the week to start my weekend mornings earlier by about an hour. The spread from those changes combined, apparently, was big enough we probably just missed each other by some 15-30 minutes each time all this time! She was only there earlier today to get some time for herself before helping someone else with something at the usual time she would have been there, changing her routine. Meanwhile, I did my errands on Saturday instead of Sunday, walking to take longer to get there, along with a detour. Coincidentally, it just all added up!

Lunch was pleasant to catch up again after all this time, given we had plenty to talk about every week or two before when we had crossed paths more often. During lunch, we got another surprise in the drawing lady walking by outside those huge windows and coming in to order food! I hadn’t seen her for almost a year, but was delighted to know she was doing relatively all right. She was just a bit more immunocompromised than the rest of us to have to be more careful and limit her time among people to draw and share her drawings with them, which I am sure saddened her but she seemed in good spirits to be beaming big smiles and some loud greetings for us as she got her food and left.

Finally, I didn’t see the food Buddhist, but he’s doing OK as well, from what my second hand fashion lady friend told me. He had also changed his sleeping routine to impact his Sunday routines. And with that news, all in this aspect of my world that had been unsynched this year was all back in sync again. It was as if some of us had made a time change, and some hadn’t. We were all just going along at whatever times our watches were saying. They just happened not to have been in sync rather than anything happening to any of us, which was really comforting to know. Now I’ll just have to see how long it’ll stay that way.

 

 

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