January 3rd

 1


That third day I started to have my suspicions. 

“What would you do to pursue your glee?” - that was the tweet. That was the entire tweet.

If the directive to follow my glee lodged in my head, the question of what I’d do to follow it was worse. It followed me around all day. I sleepwalked through meetings and ignored too many bits and pieces of the day asking myself the question over and over. I noticed others seeming to do the same.

I walked out of my house to get the mail and saw my neighbor. She was standing at her mailbox just staring down the rural road we lived on. “Morning!”, I said.

She turned as if she were moving in a dream and nodded at me. “Morning to you as well.” was all she said. Then she turned back to staring down the road.

“Waiting for someone?” I asked, perplexed at her actions.

She seemed to come out of a trance and shook her head. She laughed a low laugh and said “no, I was just deep in thought was all.”

“Oh sorry - didn’t mean to bug you!”, I said.

“Don’t worry about it - I have things I need to be doing anyway.” and with that she turned and walked back to her house.

I stood there for a short while thinking to myself if she were suffering from the same thoughts as I. Were we both asking ourselves what we’d do to follow our “glee”? What was my “glee” - I hadn’t even answered that simple question yet. 


2


Online everyone was discussing this mystery man publishing his tweets. On the TV everyone on MSNBC and CNN did think pieces about what “Glee” was and what it was worth to pursue it. Washington DC was discussing it on the floor of Congress.

I turned off the TV and shook my head. What was this? Why were three tweet, one of them just a request for followers, so big? Part of my brain said this was wrong. This was wrong wrong wrong.

And then another part of my brain said, in a soothing way, “It’s okay. This is normal. What is your Glee? What will would you do to pursue it?”

And then I stopped… and I wondered why that part sounded so much like another person's voice. And why did they make the mistake of “will” instead of just “would”?

I was paralyzed for almost half an hour going back and forth on this question. And one thing never occurred to me until much later in the month - why was I spending as much time thinking about this as others were?


3


And I wasn’t alone, I later found out. Others around the world were having the same fight in their heads. But oddly, while there were a lot of people like me… we were in the minority. Most people were simply asking what they would do, will do, to pursue “glee”.

It’s disturbing how quickly a set of tweets can get into the heads of people, isn’t it? Or could. I mean, it’s not really a question worth asking much anymore, is it? But it’s at least something to muse about.

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