Occasionally I get these flashes, short bursts of dire thought: “I’m not doing this right! I’m squandering this time!”
Continuing now into what, if you’ve followed along here at all, will be familiar ground – I’m still having these moments where I worry that the very way I’m thinking about and doing this trip is robbing me of some of its beauty.
I’ve mentioned before that I feel like I have (an almost instinctual) mindset of envisioning this journey less as one gorgeous, long thing and more as a series segments, linear, each with beginnings and end, but having to “finish” one to start the next. It’s almost as if years clambering up the rungs of the corporate ladder, and the hallowed halls of education before that, have conditioned me to this sequential grind.
And I know this is awful. I can feel it; breaking what should be a grand and languid unfolding into just another checklist of achievements. I’ve got to figure out how to transcend this (Western? American?) mentality and simply live in this space (surely I’ve said this many times before).
Three months! It’s been three months! And, yet, here I am still in my head thinking, “We’re almost to the Florida part. Then it’ll be the after-Florida part, then…”
Shameful, I feel… but maybe also just me? I mean, it’s not like I haven’t enjoyed these three months, I have – absolutely. But where and how do they sit in the bigger story of my changing through the entirety of the experience? Or maybe I just need something to worry about at all times, because I’ve been programmed that way through upbringing.
To end the rambling then, I’ll redouble efforts to stop and slow down. To walk more, no phone in-pocket; to pray and meditate and read more, not following what’s happened in politics that morning, afternoon, most recently-elapsed half-hour.
Maybe my acute awareness that this time is a gift and can, worst case, be squandered is a good thing. Maybe it’s a pox of hyper-awareness. Maybe this writing was done three paragraphs ago.
Peace.
Also written on this day...
- nothing else for miles - 2010
- just wanted a burrito - 2009
- optioning tradition - 2008
- play-by-play hyperbolized-realism - 2007
- urine my prayers - 2004
- boats, check; poop, check - 2003