The Parking Lot

Journal Entry

There is nothing special about a parking lot.

Concrete. Painted lines. Cars coming and going. Maybe a tree somewhere between rows of vehicles. Clouds overhead. An office building behind me. A gym across the way. An apartment building. Somebody's house.

Sometimes I am parked at work.

Sometimes at the gym.

Sometimes outside my apartment.

Sometimes somewhere else entirely.

It does not even have to be the same parking lot.

And maybe that is exactly why it became special.

For a long time, I have found peace sitting inside a car without driving it.

The car is stationary, but it is not permanently attached to anything.

At home, everything has a place. My desk is my desk. The walls remain where they are. The view outside is mostly the same view I saw yesterday.

At work, the office already has an identity waiting for me.

There are computers.

Tickets.

Problems.

Responsibilities.

People who need something.

The moment I walk through those doors, I become the person who is supposed to do something.

But inside a parked car, for a few minutes, I do not necessarily have to be anything.

I can simply sit.

And look through the windshield.

The windshield.

I couldn't remember that damn word this morning.

Not the windshield mirror.

Not the side mirror.

Just the fucking windshield.

Maybe that belongs in the journal too, because profound thoughts apparently do not require perfect vocabulary.

I can look through that windshield and see something different every time.

Trees.

Cars.

Buildings.

People walking somewhere.

Clouds moving across the sky.

Sometimes all I have to do is park in another space.

Turn the car around.

Face another direction.

Suddenly the same parking lot becomes a different place.

The change may only be a few degrees.

But sometimes a few degrees is enough.

A different tree.

A different piece of sky.

Morning light instead of shadow.

Rain running down the glass.

A person walking past.

An airplane somewhere above me.

The world changes inside the frame.

And somehow my thoughts change with it.

Maybe that is what I have always liked about being inside a parked car.

It is a room that can move.

A portable thinking space.

The walls travel with me, but the window into the world keeps changing.

• • •

Years ago, I used to have thoughts like these.

I would sit inside a car somewhere and think.

Sometimes about life.

Sometimes relationships.

Sometimes dreams.

Sometimes pain.

Sometimes things I wanted to build.

Sometimes things I did not yet have words for.

Then I would start the engine.

I would drive away.

And many of those thoughts would disappear.

Some probably became decisions without me remembering where the decision began.

Some became ideas.

Some became heartbreak.

Some simply vanished.

There was no RomNote Project waiting for them.

No journal.

No archive.

No book.

No place where I could say:

Wait.

That thought mattered.

Write that fucking thing down.

So they passed through me.

And I let them go.

I sometimes wonder how many things I once understood for ten minutes and then forgot for twenty years.

Maybe nothing important.

Maybe something extraordinary.

I'll never know.

That is one of the strange things about memory.

We remember what survived.

We cannot count what disappeared.

• • •

Today is different.

Now I can sit in a parking lot and speak.

I can think out loud.

A thought can become a conversation.

A conversation can become a journal.

A journal can become a poem.

A poem can become part of a story.

A story can become a book.

A stupid joke can become a fucking Godzilla comic.

And apparently a pecan pie can become literature.

Life is strange like that.

But that is also what RNP has slowly become for me.

It catches things.

Not everything needs to become profound.

Not everything needs to become public.

Not everything needs to become a book.

Some things should simply remain what they were.

But at least they do not automatically have to disappear anymore.

• • •

People sometimes imagine writers working in beautiful places.

A quiet cabin overlooking mountains.

A giant wooden desk.

Bookshelves covering the walls.

A fireplace.

Rain against a window.

Maybe some expensive fountain pen sitting beside a perfectly placed cup of coffee.

It looks wonderful.

I'd probably enjoy it too.

But there is something almost too perfect about it.

Too expected.

Too standardized.

This is where writers write.

This is where thinkers think.

This is where inspiration is supposed to happen.

I have never liked the idea that something has to look important before it is allowed to become important.

Great ideas do not check the fucking address first.

They do not ask whether the furniture is appropriate.

They do not care whether somebody prepared the atmosphere.

Sometimes an idea shows up while you are sitting in a completely ordinary parking lot before going upstairs to work.

And if you are paying attention, you catch it.

That is enough.

• • •

Maybe that connects to something larger about me.

I do not like following a road simply because everybody else is already walking down it.

That does not mean I reject rules just because they are rules.

Some rules exist for very good reasons.

Sometimes the conventional way is conventional because it fucking works.

I'll use it.

But I don't want convention deciding who I am.

There is a difference between being rebellious simply to attract attention and choosing your own direction because you want ownership of your life.

I am not interested in being different just so people will notice me.

I am interested in being myself even when being myself produces something that does not fit neatly into somebody else's category.

Maybe that is why Coffee and The Pecan Pie became what it became.

It did not ask permission to remain inside one genre.

There is story.

Romance.

Comedy.

Pain.

Poetry.

Science.

Symbolism.

Absurdity.

Photography.

A digital experience.

And whatever the hell else we put in there.

Someone can look at it and ask:

What kind of fucking book is this?

Fair question.

It is the book I wanted to make.

That is enough.

Maybe somebody will love it.

Maybe somebody will hate it.

Maybe somebody will understand exactly what I was trying to do.

Maybe nobody will.

But it exists.

It took its own route.

So did I.

• • •

And maybe that is why the parking lot fits.

A parking lot is designed for something temporary.

You arrive.

You stop.

Eventually you leave.

Nobody is supposed to build a life in Parking Space 37.

That would defeat the entire fucking purpose.

But temporary does not mean meaningless.

Sometimes the space between destinations is where you finally have enough silence to understand where you have been.

Or where you might be going.

Home has expectations.

Work has expectations.

Relationships have expectations.

The world is full of places where somebody, somewhere, needs something from us.

But there are moments inside that parked car when none of those things disappear, yet none of them completely own the moment either.

For a few minutes, I am between places.

And that little space belongs to me.

I can think about Pinky.

Or not think about Pinky.

I can think about work.

Or leave work sitting in the building behind me for another twenty minutes.

I can think about my children.

My books.

The website.

The past.

The future.

God.

Clouds.

Coffee.

Nothing.

I can simply sit there.

That matters.

• • •

And I love looking at the sky.

Maybe because the sky refuses to stay still.

Clouds move.

Light changes.

Storms come.

Storms leave.

Sometimes there is nothing but blue.

Sometimes the whole thing looks heavy.

Sometimes I look up and dream.

There are probably dreams I once had while looking through a windshield that I no longer remember.

But maybe some of them survived.

Maybe they became parts of the life I eventually built.

Maybe some are still waiting.

I don't know.

I don't need to know.

There is something comforting about allowing a thought to exist without immediately demanding that it prove its usefulness.

• • •

So perhaps this is the lesson of the parking lot.

Something does not have to happen somewhere special to become special.

Sometimes it works backward.

What happened there is what made the place special.

A parking lot can remain a parking lot.

Concrete.

Paint.

Cars.

Nothing magical.

Tomorrow someone else may park in the exact space where I sat today.

They may eat breakfast.

Scroll through their phone.

Argue with somebody.

Listen to music.

Take a nap.

They will have no idea that someone once sat there looking at the clouds and figured out another little piece of himself.

And they do not need to know.

The parking space does not belong to the story.

The story belongs to the moment.

Then I start the car.

Or open the door.

Step outside.

Walk toward wherever I was supposed to be going.

And the parking lot returns to being just a fucking parking lot.

But this time, the thought comes with me.

Because this time...

I wrote it down.

Something does not have to happen
somewhere special to become special.

Sometimes it works backward.

What happened there is what made the place special.

Source & Citation

Entry Title: The Parking Lot

Subtitle: The few minutes between where I have been and where I am going.

Category: Author/Legacy

Record Type: RNP Journal Entry / Reflection / Creativity / Place and Memory

Date: August 12, 2026

Project: The RomNote Project

Author / Voice: Romeo Imbien Mesina

Audio: Public NotebookLM audio conversation preserved in the RomNote media archive.

Source Note: The complete formatted RNP journal document is preserved as a protected original through the existing RomNote request-access system.

Request Original AccessBack to Author/LegacyBack to Archive