There’s something very silly about falling asleep at 7PM PST in the evening. It means that by 3AM PST, I’ve already had the recommended eight hours of sleep, which considering the “sleep when I’m dead” philosophy of my recently completed undergraduate life style, is too much sleep. I’m in an unwelcome yet undeniable feeling of wide-awake. And in it, I’m left taking silent stock of myself in the dark. I am at a loss of what else to do in times like these. So here it goes, I apologize if it’s a long one.
Always,
Elaine
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For a few years now, I have been secretly collecting life-lessons in the form of narcissistically re-contextualized bits of sage wisdom accumulated from things I’ve read or people I’ve met.
The first life-lesson I’d like to begin with, I strangely actually did learn in school. I had just completed a draft of my first chapter of my honors thesis and during a workshop another honors student had made it bleed with pretentious comments like, “You comb too much” or “This read seems too micro–it’s seems like a stretch” or “You’re close to the text but not” or “I don’t know what you’re trying to do with your voice.” While I didn’t understand what my reader was trying to say with these ambiguous douche bag comments, they hurt. Forgive me if I get too rhetoric, but writing for me has become an extension of my self. I thought I had to make changes somewhere and somehow to my work, and by extension to how I think, and by extension–to how I understand the world in which I act. After frantically expressing all of these concerns, my honors thesis advisor said one simple thing that I took to heart not just for my paper, but also for all of those extensions.
“Do you like it as it is and as it’s going? Are you proud of it? Then, if it has no purchase to you, forget about it.”–Michael Mascuch
So if my thesis was meant to be a metaphor for me, I loosely translated this to mean “Do you always and fuck the rest." Pride and selfishness are not always negative things; in good doses, they are means of self-preservation. While I was away on my trip, I would find myself in these comically blissful moments and right as the wave of gratitude to the universe was forming, so was a big old grain of salt–some negative thought or painful memory. And whose fault is that? I am starting to see: my very own. While this is one of the lessons that’s better manifested in theory rather than practice for me, I am starting to realize that if something does not serve my most authentic self in a positive way, then it isn’t worth a second, third, or millionth thought. I can only internalize what I allow in. It is my responsibility to drop the dead weight, recycle misplaced energy and devotion, and just ride those waves of goodness, pride, and the healthy selfishness for as long as I can.
And "doing me” has recently shown itself as a desire for one of those “big moves." I contracted my very own insatiable case of wanderlust. We find so many excuses not to travel and uproot ourselves. "It’s not the right time for me. I can’t get off of work. I don’t have the means.” But if something calls me strong enough, I’ll do whatever I have to. I’d spend money I have yet to save. I’ll say sincere, heart-felt goodbyes and see you laters. I’ll pack lightly and I’ll leave my ducks haphazardly scattered because maybe getting out there is exactly what it’s going to take to put them in a row. While I do have so many ties, I feel as if for the one’s that matter, the strings that hold us together are endless. Home feels a bit more liquid and more nebulous. For the first time in a while, I’m not subconsciously negotiating where I want to be and what I want to be doing with anyone else. I want to feel the sensation of a voluntary loneliness. You know, the perfect kind where it feels incredibly good to sit outside for lunch alone–to choose the company I keep rather than gasp for someone like air.
While I was in Krakow a friend of mine posted something on her blog that really put things into perspective for me. It made me open up to all the lessons to be learned when you’re out in the world not searching for lessons.
“Travel is a luxury, but an important one…Travel rattles your internal story a bit.”–Christine Deakers
It is, isn’t it? It does, doesn’t it? I am so incredibly lucky and grateful to have had the opportunity to take that cliché post-college Euro trip. I was initially thankful because I was in search of an escape from a pretty weird headspace I’ve been in. But it ended up being more of a frame-shift. Escapes are temporary and only pretend to be solutions. We escape to new places or new people but someday you will always either physically or mentally return to wherever or whatever it is you’re running from. But frame-shifts expose and generate new things–goals, wants, desires, skills–in spite of, or rather because of, what you were trying to outrun. You see what you have, but you see it differently. I discovered that it wasn’t a matter of trying to “find myself” but more a strong want to destroy myself–the self that lives so much in her head. And you know what I discovered? I learned that sometimes you just need to get the hell out of there because it’s nice out here (wherever here may be).
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