The Tab I Closed on Purpose

The deadline is Friday. I have known this since sometime in July, the way you know a thing is coming and keep it at a comfortable arm's length until it isn't comfortable anymore. I opened the community college fall catalog online for what I am pretty sure was the third time this summer. Maybe the fourth.

I was not looking at Business Communications. I was not even looking at anything practical. There was a course, Philosophy of Mind, Tuesday evenings, one credit, that I had been hovering over like it owed me something. I read the description probably six times across the three or four sessions I spent pretending I was just browsing. I kept thinking: this is impractical. I kept thinking: but what if it isn't. I kept a draft open in a separate window of reasons it made sense this semester and it had exactly two bullet points in it, both of which were slightly embarrassing.

And then tonight I closed the tab. Not in a frustrated way. Not in a giving-up way. In the way you close a door behind you when the room is already done for the evening.

mid-decision energy

There was something deliberate about it and I noticed that. The catalog is still there, obviously, it is not going anywhere, but the August 14th deadline is going to pass without my name attached to it and I think I already knew that when I opened the laptop. I think the opening was never really about registering. It was about checking in on the version of me that might want to, and figuring out what she needed.

What she needed, apparently, was to close the tab. I don't know what fall looks like yet. I'm leaving that open in a different, less literal way. Some decisions feel like giving up and some feel like clearing space and tonight this one felt like the second thing, which I did not entirely expect. Deadline's Friday. I'll be here.