I spent this past week of my website re-launch basking in the excitement of having such a beautiful platform for all of the thoughtful and inspiring posts I hoped to create and share.

I strategized and invited the words to emerge from my brain and land on my smart and cozy home page. And waited some more. Crickets.

I sat in front of a blank screen more than a few times and tried to evoke some therapist/coach-y jewels about relationships, boundaries, support, or connection. What’s louder than the silence of crickets? That’s what I heard.

I decided to stop trying and just let it (whatever “it” was) show up when I was ready; the words always find me and in the most unassuming places. And so there it was today at 2:53 p.m. while I was inching through a green light on my way to get my daughter at school.

For several weeks, our local gas and electric company has been doing extensive digging around my neighborhood. Every day is an exercise in creativity when it comes to navigating cones, barricades and holes in the roads. I don’t do myself any favors by leaving the house with minutes to spare each day as the crews move their equipment from one block to the next. Unpredictable. Annoying. I get stuck. I mutter to myself as I pass the men in yellow hats holding up their “slow” signs as I figure out how to get where I’m going.

I try to look ahead as I round a curve or peek over the rise of a hill so I can amend my approach and hurry up to get to where I need to go. Sometimes it works, but lately it doesn’t so I just have to stop and wait. Eventually, things free up and I get where I need to go; I prepare and readjust when necessary.

I almost dismissed my traffic light moment as a platitude — too much of a cliche to honor with words. I was trying too hard. I left it where it was and went on about my life until it came up again later in the evening during a call I shared with a gifted coach and generally awesome life clarifier, Dyana Valentine.

Our time together was a dive into a discussion about what conditions we need in our lives for greatness. We got into all kinds of life-architecture goodness on that call, but the first condition that came up for me was “try less” and so I’m honoring that here.

Try less not just with writing, but as an overall condition in my life. Showing up. Being present. Available. There don’t have to be any za-za-zu endings or grand metaphors about choosing different roads and what the “slow” signs really mean. Whether I’m sharing traffic epiphanies or something more profound, it feels good to know I can just be here in my online home, palms up, and ready for whatever happens next.