Pause

It’s my new favorite word.

It could be French, pow-say. Or it’s how I call out to my friend Paul when I slur, Pawz. Or the more traditional pause button I hit when I need to prepare a snack so I can finish a movie.

It doesn’t mean stop. It doesn’t mean forget it. It doesn’t mean go back and look. It means freeze. It means let me think. It means I’m not ready to move forward.

You can pause anything, really. A relationship, a career, an adult movie when someone’s at the door. Anything. By choice.

There is one thing, however, that pauses naturally, uncontrollably and unpredictably. Writing. Writing and pause are like master and servant. I just haven’t figured out who serves who.

The pause that happens when you are about to write something. The pause that happens in the middle of it all. The pause that happens when you re-read the load of poopie-crap you just wrote. The pause that happens when you realize you have to re-write. The pause that happens when you don’t know how to fix it. The pause that happens right before you write the most amazing words in perfect sequential order, perfectly stating exactly what you are feeling and depicting your intention. The pause when you share the writing. The pause when you go back to re-read it for a once more ego boost. The pause when you realize you spelled pause wrong.

Pause, pause, pause. I’m done with thee. I’ve become more like the search button, only inching forward a few seconds at a time. Trying to break loose from the grip of pause.

Let me go pause. Let me write. I need to pour all of these thoughts out of the horizontal wrinkle that has tattooed my forehead. The words have to fall out, like a kid overturning his toy box filled with Lego’s and watching the colorful mess lay on the floor at his feet. And like that kid, with a little time, I will assemble something really cool by connecting words and sentences and thoughts.

But now, I just need them out. How about it Pause?