I was at Trader Joe’s tonight, feeling out of sorts.

The work day had just ended, and a small something towards the end of the day put me in a funk. I wasn’t in the greatest mood, but I wasn’t unhappy. I sort of love it when something puts me in a funk though, because it calls for introspection. It got me thinking how sometimes we are so entrenched in the way certain things make us feel all the time, as though our wants/needs should determine the world’s priorities (to steal from my favorite video of all time). Just because I wasn’t feeling all that great after work didn’t mean a) my life was over b) I was going to have a bad night c) I was going to have a bad week or d) that I should give a flyin’ hoot about this one small thing that made me feel icky. Sometimes I wish I could hover a mile above the city for awhile to get perspective on my size and get away from my head.

So I was standing in line at Trader Joe’s, absorbing the music of life from all angles. Not in the greatest mood, but not unhappy.

I should pause here to mention I was there because I had a gift card.

When it was my turn, the cashier and I got to talking about how I’d almost left my ID in the car, (he asked to see it cause I bought a bottle of wine), and how horrifically terrible that would have been if I had. Then as he was packing up my loot, he started talking about how he was off his game, because he was having trouble fitting my toilet paper and paper towels in the paper bags with all my other goods. I told him he was fine, and that he was doing a great job. I thanked him, and as he handed the bags to me he said, “There you go, now you accomplish something.”

Huh? 

“You got rid of that gift card.”

Oh. 

I love this, because he didn’t actually say ‘you accomplish something’, he said ‘you‘ve accomplished something’. He was referencing the gift card I’d just used to pay for my food. He trying to say that no longer having to carry it around in my wallet was an accomplishment. But dear God I swear on all that is holy that he said “…now you accomplish something, Monique!“

It was like my Joan of Arcadia moment. Do you remember that show? How Joan, the main character, would be talking to a random person, and then out of nowhere that random person would turn into God? It was as magical and as mystical as that. I couldn’t believe a cashier was being so forthright about my plans post-Trader Joes, and I even thought for a minute that this might offend people who had indeed, already accomplished a lot.

On my way home I realized that I had only heard what I wanted to hear.  I had been in a funk, and even though I was ready to go home and ‘crush it’ with regard to my side projects, I felt like I needed a little inspiration to get me going.

It sounds cheesy, but from that point on, shit got better. Even the toll guy who took my parking ticket as I exited the structure seemed to pick up on some strange cool vibe I was emitting and was SO freakin friendly. Light attracts light.

I made the photo for this post today shortly after I got home.  I saw it on Facebook, and decided you know what? Some of us have to work during the day, and we can’t unfortunately spend the entirety of it working on where we want to be.

But then there’s the night.

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Monique Muro

Monique is an exceedingly happy human from LA. She runs the blog A Novel Quest, and writes. A lot.

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