The needle moves gracefully

I was quite vacant yesterday, as I am wont to do, while doing that cycling thing at the gym when I heard the first few lines--you're the sky that I fell through.  And almost instantly I was transported back to a few months when I first heard that song.

I had just gone out of the gym and I was walking over to where I would wait for a jeepney to take me back to the office.  I was unmindful of what I was hearing on my earphones, I just kept walking, a bit in a hurry, because I slipped out of the office before noon and got out of the gym almost 4PM.  It was one of those things I allowed myself to do, to go out of the office whenever and do other stuff while supposedly still at work.

It was mid-October, probably my busiest time at work.  I was clocking in, on an average, 14 hours a day with no overtime pay.  I would arrive in the office around 8:30 in the morning and leave, at the earliest, eleven in the evening.  When I got home, I'd open my laptop, remote in to our office network and finish my reports until around 2AM.  Then I'd sleep, too tired to even ponder on things.  I'd be up by 5:30AM.  For two weeks my schedule was like that and I could feel I was so close to crashing.  I was getting too uptight, snapping at everyone I was working with for not meeting deadlines and being so stupid with their job.  I realized that, so I would take a few breaks here and there, usually in the afternoon before I have to work again in the evening. 

It was one of those afternoons.  The Fort being so drafty, with a lot of spaces and buildings on development, that it hit me how directionless I was.  It was all work; it had been all work.  There was pretty much nothing else on the horizon except dreams halted under construction. 

If my heart was a compass you'd be north.

It was as if a cold water washed over me and I was suddenly conscious of what I was listening to.  I guess it wouldn't be so bad, this life, if it were leading into something or someone.  If all the hours punched in at work, the stress and the restlessness, all this feeling of displacement and mindless wanderings point to something.  That all this is just the needle of the compass getting calibrated, swinging gracefully back and forth as it settles and find its north.

Fast forward to a few months and a moment later.  The traffic light hit red and a car slowed down to a stop on the empty lane beside me.  From my untinted view, I can see two guys on the car.  The driver pushed the stick to a park, pulled the hand brake, and kissed the other guy riding shotgun with him.  They sat in the car looking forward at the highway ahead of them, waiting for the traffic light to turn green, so sure of where they're headed and driving to; while I sat there, staring at the same empty highway, and I've never been so unsure of where I'm going to.

Risk it all cause I'll catch you if you fall
Wherever you go...

The traffic light turned green and the cars sped off to their destinations.  One found home while the other ended up in a bookstore.