I had a completely different post scheduled for today, but I hit writers block, or boredom.
When I’m killing time, I play Solitaire on my phone. I was on a roll, y’all! En route to being my highest scoring game! I hadn’t even had to refresh the deck, and I was down to two cards. Feeling like a boss, I refused to use the “hint” feature, I was determined that I could switch some things around and win on the first deal. When I got stuck, no way out, I used the hint. Refresh deck. There was only one card left in the deck, I could see it, I knew it wouldn’t work, but maybe, the game saw something I didn’t?
Nope. It didn’t.
That particular hand, the one that set me up to be my highest scoring ever, had just pulled a 2013 “Hey ‘Bama, got a second?” on my ass.
In true Jaime fashion, I quickly swiped up to close out, because I was pissed! I was done with Solitaire. For good this time. I was literally so excited for this win, y’all! And just like that, “Game Over” was the pop up.
It took me back to this Instagram post that broke 500 likes, and the accompanying blog post that had 1,100 page views in 48 hours. Not a huge breakthrough, but for me, it was! I thought, “Holy shit! There are over 500 people that liked my outfit and more than 1,000 that liked my words!”.
At that moment, I was literally outside of my body. My arms were tingling and I was jumping around teary-eyed that that many people read my post. It really made all of these 3am bedtimes, just to wake up three hours later, worth it. But then, yet again, Jaime kicked in.
“Well then why didn’t 1,000 people like my Instagram post?”.
“Furthermore, why do 300+ view my stories, but don’t double tap my posts?”
More so, if those two posts were so heavy in traffic, why didn’t I gain any more subscribers or followers? Maybe people just don’t like me, they simply click in just to view?
After beating myself up about something that I was recently celebrating, I realized that life is a whole lot like Solitaire. It doesn’t matter how close you get, how easy that particular hand you were dealt was. Oftentimes, it doesn’t even necessarily matter how hard you worked. Or how badly you wanted it. If it just isn’t in the cards for you, it just isn’t.
Without a doubt, it’s a tough realization, but an accurate one. You don’t always get what you want, or even what you feel you deserve. Life can literally feel like an unfair game, and more times than not, it is. The only thing that you can change is how you react to it. If playing the game is rewarding in any way, then isn’t it worth it in the end?
Photographs by Jaimie Sweeten
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