We run to newness. Call it wanderlust, call it boredom. It strikes my mind when change turns to adjustment and the feeling of settling in crawls into my cranium. Where is the challenge? What opportunity lies around the corner? What will the next adventure be?! Madrid? NYC? Auckland? and so on, etc. I feel akin to a panting dog waiting for the lick of a bone. I need it; I must have it! GIVE ME! Perhaps its the wintertime blues or something more chronic that needs to be examined further. I don't know precisely, but what I have declared is that this discontentment that seems to seep into my mind like a hookworm infesting its host is something that I have the knowledge and personal strength to take the action to prevent.
It's easy to look at your life and think, "If only....". The ending being seemingly endless here. If only I lived in Madrid, making local friends would be easier. Sure, maybe. Or? Insert "if only" and the chain grows into an unstoppable amoeba.
If you asked for one word to describe my twenties, restless would be my easy answer. And certainly this is the word that would describe my day, my week and probably this month. I have trouble staying still and my insatiable desire to live everywhere, experience everything and shake the "self" that I have created in exchange for feeling the essence of another, is all a part of it. So ordinary, I never wanted to be. But is it the personal struggle of the twenties, that thing they call self-discovery, or something I'll always be panting for? Adventure! Change! Insecure paychecks! Yes!!
Being a wandering nomad has its inherent benefits, traveling to faraway locals being a quick given, but the not so easily quantified changes are more difficult to pin down. The quirks that unfold over time, that materialize at surprising moments. These being the little reminders of why I crave more, an anecdote to the strength of the hookworm that burrows inside you.
It's those cold days, those lonely days, when no one understands you, that you've got to bite back the call of change. The desire of wanderlust, to pick it all up and go again, the whispering "what if" that weakens your form. Because does that really answer your problem?
As if medicinal, today I walked into somewhere new. The bar was simple. A bull's head, the mighty symbol of Spain, hung from the wall of concrete bricks. Matadors, in accordance, danced in black and white photos surrounding the slab of the bar, while we ate our complementary tapa of homemade paella. And I saw through myself, I wasn't seizing what I had right in front of me. Desiring somewhere else had left me not seeing what was right there.
Adventure! Or at least wonderful tapas right outside my piso and inside a bull's ring.
It's easy to look at your life and think, "If only....". The ending being seemingly endless here. If only I lived in Madrid, making local friends would be easier. Sure, maybe. Or? Insert "if only" and the chain grows into an unstoppable amoeba.
If you asked for one word to describe my twenties, restless would be my easy answer. And certainly this is the word that would describe my day, my week and probably this month. I have trouble staying still and my insatiable desire to live everywhere, experience everything and shake the "self" that I have created in exchange for feeling the essence of another, is all a part of it. So ordinary, I never wanted to be. But is it the personal struggle of the twenties, that thing they call self-discovery, or something I'll always be panting for? Adventure! Change! Insecure paychecks! Yes!!
Being a wandering nomad has its inherent benefits, traveling to faraway locals being a quick given, but the not so easily quantified changes are more difficult to pin down. The quirks that unfold over time, that materialize at surprising moments. These being the little reminders of why I crave more, an anecdote to the strength of the hookworm that burrows inside you.
It's those cold days, those lonely days, when no one understands you, that you've got to bite back the call of change. The desire of wanderlust, to pick it all up and go again, the whispering "what if" that weakens your form. Because does that really answer your problem?
As if medicinal, today I walked into somewhere new. The bar was simple. A bull's head, the mighty symbol of Spain, hung from the wall of concrete bricks. Matadors, in accordance, danced in black and white photos surrounding the slab of the bar, while we ate our complementary tapa of homemade paella. And I saw through myself, I wasn't seizing what I had right in front of me. Desiring somewhere else had left me not seeing what was right there.
Adventure! Or at least wonderful tapas right outside my piso and inside a bull's ring.
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