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General Life Updates/Back?

This post-grad identity overhaul has been exhausting. After walking across a stage in polyester under the high-altitude sun one May morning, I was stripped of a routine I’d fought to create and love and my identity markers that I’d been taught to cling to for twenty years. Initially, the freedom was exhilarating. Now, I’m feeling blessed but also ripped off my the four years I supposedly spent “finding myself” over the cushion of a dining hall and paid rent and many friends around each street corner and potential validation of my worth/intelligence built into my daily obligation of homework and class time. 

I woke up in the state of anxiety that’s been filling my lungs since last summer. 

I got a text saying I didn’t have to come into work. An entire day to fill, dropped in my lap. Initially, my groggy eyes and aching body that had been on my feet for five days straight, and in bed routinely past midnight, felt ease, knowing I could fall back asleep. Then the dread set in — having to move my car to a spot that might not get a ticket slapped on the windshield, combatting and organizing and rearranging series of “should do” “could do” activities around a hypothetical clock, not making any room for “want to.” 

I went back to bed, soothing my mind by telling myself I will only do what I want to do today. 

It scares me that that concept is so unappealing. But I’ve been drowning myself in work since I’ve gotten to Seattle, initially to keep up with all its expenses, but also subconsciously to escape the paralyzing realization that I might not know what I want or like, or that those have changed. Now that one of my jobs has stopped with the school year, and another is lightening up for August, I’m excited and terrified at the amount of free-time. 

I slept in, made myself a rainbow colored bowl of yum for brunch, and sat under the sun with my new library book in hand, a humor-based examination of all the daily shit (Everything’s Trash, but It’s Okay by Phoebe Robinson). In typical Seattle fashion, the clouds showed up and banished me to my apartment, where I took to the sectional couch I finally purchased after months of avoiding the permanence of this residence. I decided I wanted to write, to create, to express. I’ve neglecting this outlet for the past few months, in part because my fingers and brain were tired of all the processing I’d been doing while traveling and beyond. But I also think I put down my pen and keyboard because, much like purchasing the couch, writing it down made the whole moving across the country thing real.

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Still bopping, just within a smaller mile radius

Things are shifting, thinking about lots beyond my control/comprehension. my body’s picking up on it faster than my heart can process.

I spent all of yesterday&today feeling as if my head was full of helium and my body was tethering it down.

This feeling persisted to the point where I was apprehensive to drive, but I had to pick my dad up in Westerly. As we talked on our way home, I unintentionally identified the culprit of my helium-head, my foggy perception: I’ve been working for a woman who is getting divorced and her mom died on Christmas and she’s raising her two boys alone. Spending my days alongside her heartbreak has affected me in ways I hadn’t recognized.

I’m eager to becoming an adult human with a lease, a job, a regular grocery store, and a dentist who doesn’t know my parents and sisters, but I’m struggling to accurately imagine the next section of my life. It’s terrifying trying to accept that all that I think I know right now will be negligible if not negated by what I learn over the next year.

When I’m envisioning my next move, I can only think logistically—about apartment facilities, career opportunities, whether to pack my winter clothes or get them shipped. I have yet to envision the people and the feelings. The lessons and the blessings that come dressed as obstacles. The stuff and the souls that twist my heart like a wrung out rag. The moments and the emotions that expand or contradict my preconceived idea of what it means to love and be loved.

With these things come divorce and death, maybe not to me just yet or at all (well, the divorce at least) but to people I know and care for and even love. And those things scare me, and based off what I’m witnessing now, those things are complicated and hard. They’re also, based off what I’m witnessing now, doable and survivable.

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Second day of 2019:

Taught yoga at the ass crack of dawn, made my heart full that people came and we stretched and im getting better

My car died as a punishment for getting a half-caf when I know what caffeine does to me

Got a failed jump from my wife, so we went to the pet store to wait for the portable battery (thx dad)

Now for setting a month’s intentions, shOoing away the dread&monotony and welcoming the unpredictability of this transitional period

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Color blox

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Tate Modern findings

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During one of the many, many, MANY, self-exploration exercises in yoga teacher training, I articulated for the first time about my struggle to accept the gray areas, the happy mediums, the fine art of balance.

I wrote:

Growing up a worrywart, I experienced constant tension between my desire to be carried by ocean waves and my fear of getting pulled under, my desire to get messy but fear of making a mess, my desire to share myself and connect with others and my fear of them leaving as I was not enough..

The friction I experienced escalated as growing older meant becoming an independent player (victim?) in our label-obsessed society. I became convinced that I couldn’t be outgoing as well as introspective, I couldn’t love looking cute and expect people to still think there is a deeper side of me, I couldn’t be impulsive and also thrive in a routine.

After a stint of getting lost at a big city university, I shipped myself off to the wilderness for three months. I climbed trees, rocks, and mountains, threw myself to the open ocean, was always a mess of some sort, and explored the expanse of my heart as I connected deeply with my fellow adventurers.

I went on to a small school in the Colorado mountains where I studied psychology—a science that helped me reconcile the polarity I experienced between my rationality and my emotions. Psychology taught me the beauty in balance and the interdependence of polar concepts. I was enlightened to the idea that the area between two extremes is not boring. It is not only stable but also deeper than one label or the other.

Although this piece was one of the first times I confronted this tendency that was preventing me from being free from the expectations I put upon myself (aka from being content and even, uh, happy!), it was only an initial step to resolve.

Almost every psychology and education class (as well as most CC classes quite frankly) requires at least one exercise that entails identifying oneself through adjectives, personality traits, relationships, goals, and past achievements. I have been required to describe myself countless times with labels in school even before college, so between those obligatory classroom practices along with my personal self-exploration, I feel exceptionally in tune with what adjectives qualify me. Thanks to the aforementioned issues I have with gray areas, my sense of identity falters when I can’t uphold one of the qualities I knew to be me in 100% of the time. The moment I fail to meet the criteria for maintaining this quality, a vortex sucks me in as I question if I am not that quality, who the fuck am I? Answer: I have that quality, I am not that entire quality

I chose to travel because I wanted to know myself without the boundaries of obligations, of expectations, of familiar social connections. Stripping away the scaffolding that kept me within certain lines over the past, well, twenty four years, I am exploring not just the qualities I consider to be crucial to my makeup, but under what circumstances these character markers reveal themselves.

This journey has been a giant jump toward resolve, but despite the distance I’ve overcome, I am not as close as I’d like to be.

Blessed I am to be passionate about uncovering the human beneath the ivy vines of experience and inexperience.

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My last swim of 2018 (realistically), Kasjuni Beach in Split, Croatia, November 17th, windy and 60 degrees

I went to the beach in a flannel, jeans, and jacket. Locals were dressed in the same, plus hats and gloves. So many people were swimming, one lady did laps for an hour

I need this ritual to be part of my day as much as it can be

The ocean balances my desire to be consistently grounded. The flow, the ebbs, the tides remind me that constant change (within reason) is necessary to feel ALIVE. The interconnectivity of the waves remind me that I am part of something bigger and to be removed from it would leave me purposeless.

The ocean is often used in the metaphor for the unity of individual people, their belonging to the larger population of people, and the universe. In a podcast I listened to recently, the host spoke about how our egos convince that we separating ourselves from others means we are coming into our power. The power, however, lies in our humble ability to accept that we are part of something bigger than ourselves, and while we have autonomy in this journey, we must surrender to our role within this larger power. Surrender guides us to receive what we want out of life, or rather, what this power dictates our wants, our path to be. The speaker compared this thought processes to waves in the ocean. If a wave were to think it did not need the ocean to exist, it would pop out into thin air, and then what? What purpose could the wave serve once it was above and away from what gave it life, gave it meaning? What is a wave if it doesn’t have the ocean to fuel it into becoming more than still water?

The Bhagavad Gita uses the analogy of a pot being submerged in the ocean. When you pick the pot out of the water, you can call it “pot water” but its essence is the same as the ocean water. This proposes our inherent shared essence of living beings — we come in different containers, but our internal composition is the same. To deny shared essence, to attribute being to only oneself is to believe that one could be satisfied if every earthly being and element were to dissipate.

I want to swim once a day everyday

Or whatever is closest to that

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When I describe to others why I planned, or rather didn’t plan, this trip, I always lead with “If I want to stay somewhere longer, I can,” and follow with, “and if I don’t like somewhere I can get up and go.” This order has been unconscious but makes sense considering the my anticipated (and experienced) likelihood of encountering these issues. The former explanation is more than palatable, it’s preferable. It’s a scenario I dreamed of and have taken advantage: finding a place that filled me enough to extend my stay. The latter, however, had yet to become an issue until the other evening.

All of the places I’d visited thus far either fulfilled me in the amount of days I scheduled or filled me so much that I wanted more, so I stayed. It was not until the evening I landed in Budapest that I couldn’t fathom spending an entire three days there. I had heard nothing but incredible reviews, and I wanted desperately to experience the city how it had been described to me. There was a longstanding battle between the expectations others had set for me and this city and the reality of my current mindset. I had to accept that a place not being right for me now has no baring on the quality of the place in general. Despite a day and some evening hours toughing it out in the rain-snow combo (cheeks pink, nose numb, and fingers fumbly, shoulders and neck morphed into one shrug, back muscles permanently tense trying to retain heat), I completely understood why people have been taken aback by it, and I only witnessed the periphery of what those who loved it saw. My heart, however, did not feel enraptured and eager to know more. It felt tired and upset. By 4 pm on my first day after soaking in a thermal bath in that rain/snow, I accepted I needed to move on.

I eventually remembered one of my driving forces for this journey was to become more in tune with my gut as I allow it to guide me through the murky, boundless waters of post-grad existence. I kept screening the calls on my intuition, picking up every now and then just to seethe, “shut the fuck up.” In turn, my bones rattled with anxiety trying to send me messages to call my intuition back, she had some things she needed to clarify to me.

Why is listening to our positive intuitive messages simple, but the negative ones are met with concrete bricks of resistance? Why is it easier to lean into comfort than to back away from discomfort? Distancing myself from discomfort doesn’t immediately put me back in a place of safety, I’m still left in a waiting room of doubt and little guidance on where to retreat to the comfort I seek. Positive intuitive messages offer me clear guidelines for what to do, while negative ones only offer up “don’t do this.” Trusting my gut when something isn’t right means having enough strength and energy to step into an abyss of uncertainty and then guide myself back to confidence.

I ate a hundred bucks and switched my flight. I’ll be back for you when it’s warm and my head is ready, Budapest. As I sped home through the weather to my hostel to grab my bag and head to the airport, I felt a high I hadn’t treated myself to in a minute—liberated with the ability to book a flight the night before and take it to another country.

At 9:05 pm, I waited in the dark on Platform T waiting for the shuttle for the train station. The rain-snow fell on my uncovered head, pinked my cheeks, numbed my nose, and made my fingers fumbly, and I settled into the sensation that this was the right decision. This feeling cradled me to ease. Later that evening, I learned my soul sister who I’m meeting here is leaving the exact same day as me (our dates had succumb to unpredictability and we had yet to confirm them with one another). This morning woke up with only a few hours of sleep to the BLUE sky (haven’t seen it in a few days and didn’t expect it here of all places). These are signs and all is right.

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That last picture is the front of my hostel

Spooktown USA !!!

Walk up 6 flights of stairs tho it was a lil dreambunkland

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Stumbled upon a cat oasis on the waterfront

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7:30 am busride Split —> Budapest

When I took the last picture, the woman who had rolling the cart barked at me but I couldn’t understand. Between the broom and her demeanor I’m getting Croatian witchy vibez ??

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Down to clown .... but no one do it with !

I was in Barcelona with Elise, a friend gifted to me by the transitive property of relationships (She is friends with a friend who was traveling with my friend and they are now traveling together). She was alternating between traveling with the aforementioned friend group and by herself. We walked in the rain to a disappointing flea market (we should have known our fate, it was right by the bus station), and then ended up at Glories, a mall. We successfully hunted for her coveted pair of perfect sexy mom jeans in a chainstore I cannot remember the name of, treated ourselves to PSLs (my very first), and finished the day at HEMA, a classier version of Flying Tiger (basically all the non-essential essentials from Target crammed into one store, it’s a dream and a nightmare). 

We were on the subject of traveling alone, do we like it, what does it offer, what does it deprive us of. We agreed that the self-exploration and introspection is unparalleled to being alone at home or being abroad with friends, that much I had already confirmed on my own.

She then brought up something that I had yet to dig into. 

“I don’t think it’s particularly fun. Like I wouldn’t say I have a lot of fun while I’m by myself.” 

This was a month and a half into my trip, and I had yet to broach this concept. In Barcelona, I was warmly received by a group of people who I strongly associate with the laughter and daily goodness in my life as I spent most days over the course of two years with at least one of them. My natural facial expression shifted from neutral to a dumb grin, I think because I hadn’t laughed like that in so long that I was making up for lost time. 

Elise’s comment made me increasingly aware of the “fun” I lacked in my day to day. This is not to say I never had a good time―plenty of that was had with new and fleeting pals with the deliberate intention to do something fun― nor was the time I spent alone unpleasant. The subtle incorporation of silliness that comes with doing benign things with people you know, however, was missing. I witnessed lots of weird stuff worth a giggle. I committed absentminded, embarrassing blunders that would set off some laughter with the right audience. There was potential for humor in the interactions I had that was inevitably lost in the hopeless vortex of a language barrier. Like socks and washing machines, the joke was too laborious and hopeless to recover, so we would switch subjects. 

I was now confronted with the fact that inherent fun-ness (word?) comes with existing amongst people who you love and because you love them they make depressing, distressing, or plain boring things fun (i.e. going to the mall to shop for pants instead of ogling at a Gaudi building).  

The sound of this realization seems sadder than its reality. Yes, not laughing as much out loud sounds bleak, but I would be more worried for my wellbeing (as would others) if I found myself giggling at everything as I stood alone. I can still appreciate the humor that comes with being human without overtly laughing at it. What does make me sad is the absence of laughter that comes from being surrounded by the relationships that have evolved partly based on a shared sense of humor, nurtured to feel comfortable sharing comments that would only be properly acknowledged by someone I’ve known for a certain duration. What I just described is just the nature of missing people, which happens when living 6+ hours ahead of them, and it is not even comparatively as sad as the idea of living joylessly. I’ll see them when I see them, and luckily, I’ll see Olivia and Elise in 5 days

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Hit with a whiff of HBE stench

I feel personally victimized by the stench created by my roommate who is peeling & popping hard boiled eggs in his bed 

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