The Suspense is Terrible

But I have a confession . . . 👀

“The suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.”
—Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest: A Trivial Comedy for Serious People (1895)

My stomach lurched as my hands seized around the cold metal rung, feet clad in striped knee socks, furiously gripping the rung below. The ladder swayed and groaned in response. My heart tried to make a break for it.

Halfway there, not too late to turn around and call it.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I looked up. Ten more to go, putting me three stories—about thirty feet—above solid ground.

My forced smile doesn’t convey how terrified I felt, hands gripping that curved handrail for dear life.

I will go to my grave happy if I never once skydive or bungee jump.

But ten years ago this week, I took a trapeze class at Pier 40 along the West Side Highway so that I could say I did something daring (or at least novel) for my thirtieth birthday. Clouds dimmed the sky, befitting my mood that year.

My friend Adam came with me for moral support. I was having trouble getting a grip on my business, my relationships, and my mental health. Meanwhile, I should have been celebrating that I still had visible triceps:

I can’t help but reflect on how the last ten years have unfolded. Right now, even with a cloudy future, I feel alive. More alive than I have in years, in large part because of the permission I’ve granted myself to drop any sense of pretense or posturing here on ‘doh.

A confession: I find this liminal period, the one suspended between business and financial trapeze bars, thrilling.¹

A second confession: I might have fomented the collapse of corporate income in my business. It wasn’t premeditated per se, but intent had been brewing. Second-degree revenue stream murder.