Setting the Scene
Loch Ba, stolen from my Mom’s Facebook because I didn’t take pictures muahahaha
Gray-blue walls and dry mulch covering the front yard. An obscenely comfy queen mattress and my closet, doorless, packed to the brim from clothes I have bought over the entirety of my life. Most of them I don’t wear. That’s gotta be normal, right? That I only wear around 30% of my wardrobe regularly? The rest lie in the ‘throw me away’ or ‘once I lose weight, these’ll fit me again’ piles.
That’s my room. I have known this room for the vast majority of my life. It has served as a cocoon, as a refuge, as a pigsty.
It has witnessed my childhood Elementary years, my awkward middle-school years, my nail-by-nail clawing crawl through highschool. I think, with all of this, I would just like to thank it one last time before I leave.
Although I will only be gone for 9 months (returning June of 2023), I definitely believe that it won’t be the same room that I left. It’ll be cleaner than I left it, for sure. The 4 walls will be the same, but my eyes may see another room, another life.
While it may not be my room anymore, I will still have the same problems - the same struggles. And I think having this massive trip in front of me has really crystallized the ways in which I balance my life.
The question starts like this: “What am I going to do in Scotland for nine months?”
Then it precipitates into a waterfall of philosophizing and goal setting; all while trying to maintain a mindfulness so that I can actually enjoy this amazing opportunity. What will I consider a ‘success’ or ‘unwasted’ when I’m back in that same room after all this is over?
I think the first thing is just to say “yes.” After that the rest of it will all fall into place.
And while that wholesome pursuit into the unknown is fantastic, there’s so much more. Finishing that short story for the DEL award, getting my website tightened up for my resume.
So I must cling onto the juxtapositions of having purpose, of setting goals and being myopic in their pursuit, of being free in the mind in pursuit of enjoying that myopia.
The thought of that makes me feel unstable. Does anybody else find that unnerving, that paradox?
