detached observations: Dequeue Phase

This essay was originally published on smolnero.com, where all pieces from the Earthly Communications series are first shared.

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What does it mean to actually take something out of the queue? What makes something ready? It brings us back to the markers we placed earlier—the natural caution signals our bodies send, shaped by experience, intuition, and, dare I say lightly, treacherous environments. I encourage trust here—trust in one’s own common sense. As we begin paying closer attention to what our senses offer, respecting the signals even when the timing isn’t fully in our control, patience emerges. And it’s that patience that makes room for us to begin embracing and processing the traumas we’ve carried.

Markers associated with trauma that are ready to be dequeued often show up as familiar tension, or the subtle acknowledgement of behavioral loops. This is where retrospection can trigger a kind of stack overflow—a recursive loop of memories without resolution. It’s also where a rebalance function becomes essential: a mechanism to realign what belongs to the present self versus what was constructed by the past. When the current self can recognize the shape of what was once buried, that’s when real processing begins.

In OCaml, a queue can be structured as:

type 'a queue = Queue of 'a list * 'a list

This defines a queue that holds two lists. (front, back) — where front is a list of items in their correct order (oldest to newest), and back is the reversed list (newest to oldest). Together, they form a two-list queue that allows fast operations at both ends in a purely functional way. At times, one may struggle with imposter syndrome, as dequeuing a memory can feel like processing something new, but in reality, it’s pulling from the back—reshuffled into the front by the current context. The front is what you’re actively holding: the narrative you believe you've processed. The back holds what your younger self archived—unspoken tension, learned silence, protective beliefs designed to keep you safe. But the queue isn’t always full. And when it's empty, we reach for inspiration. Because that—at least briefly—is what fuels ambition. And here is where the concept of steal() becomes relevant. Whereas dequeuing is often natural, internal, and self-directed, there are moments when the queue runs dry. In these moments, one processor or thread can steal work from another’s queue. In programming, this is called dynamic load balancing. In life, we tend to call it influence—or, depending on the context, idea theft.

There’s a strange discomfort around inspiration today, as if needing someone else’s motion to spark your own is a flaw. But stealing is a natural instinct. It’s a genetic function, deeply embedded in our social and creative wiring. We will always look to one another to build what’s next. That’s not a failure. That’s evolution. A system that allows for shared memory and fluid processing will always outperform one locked in self-containment.

When executed well, this form of sharing creates efficiency. Not just in distributed systems, but in personal ones. It redistributes emotional and intellectual weight. It allows influence to move freely and gives the cycle room to breathe. These aren’t just borrowed ideas. They’re shared loops—feedback spirals that keep things flowing when our own thread is tired. That’s not theft. That’s balance.