Time.

There is a clock on the wall of my living room that has had the wrong time on it since the day that I hung it. I had left the clock ticking away in a box in the spare room for over a month after I moved in before I decided to put it on the wall and it has been there, silent, ever since.

This clock used to hang on the the living room wall at the house I grew up in. It has a chime that should go off every hour on the hour, and the pendulum has the kind of sure and steady swing that, for whatever reason not understood by me, I used to love watching when I was younger.

Now, the chime is turned off even though the hands still move steadily around the clock. Right now it is showing that it is 7:43 pm, even though the time on my phone is more accurately showing me that it is 10:32 at night.

I don’t really know why, but having that clock still running even though the time is incredibly wrong makes me feel less anxious. Like, I can look at that clock and know that even though it still looks like it is working just fine, it’s actually completely wrong. It’s failing at the one job it has to do.

Maybe it’s just reassuring to know that it’s okay to keep plugging along sometimes even when what is going on internally doesn’t make sense. It’s okay to wake up, go to work, come home, sleep, and repeat even when my thoughts are stuck in their own little spiral. My brain may be wrong, but it’s good to keep going. At some point I’ll change the time of that clock on my wall and at some point I’m going to be on track for where I want to be in life again too, but it’s okay to to not be okay right now.

Not everything has to be right to be beautiful.