I’m gonna see where this goes. Since I haven’t really written anything. (Though I have many many things to say but she can’t seem to chose. Or maybe I’m just scared to. Just have to go with taking everything I learned, and throw it away. In this space.)
[time + money][time & serendipity][death][escape rooms]
so. the the world of my yellow moleskin.
[time + money]
I’ve been thinking about the concept of time a lot lately… mostly because I feel like I don’t have enough of it. (I calculated it; I spent about 49.1% of my waking hours either working or headed to work. And while I enjoy work… I don’t enjoy doing anything AT ALL for that amount of time. Balance. Right? But I guess this is progress since “work” in college felt like 90% of the time.)
I’ve also been thinking a lot about money. (My brother and I, now, have all these Quora threads that we’ve sent to each other. How to invest in your 20’s, Why you should buy and not rent, etc. etc.) And I’ve started thinking more about money because I see the accumulation of it as the only way to take that 49% down to something that I can actually live with and enjoy in this life. The irony.
It feels wrong. And uncomfortable. The logic of this. The more time flies, as 19 turns into 20 and 21 into 23, I’m hit harder with the realization that time is a form of currency we can’t un-spend. (What I spend my time doing now, I can never get back.) Take school. I spent four years of college busting my ass off… but for what? I had a great time (qualify: amazing time!), but I spent a lot of that sacrificing for the sake of notches on my belt that in the end, still left me incredibly unsatisfied and unfulfilled. I often wonder now, with life, if I’m doing the same thing? Of sacrificing now for the sake of something I believe will be better in the future? Only to realize that the future, too, will be nothing but sacrificing?
Perhaps. It is unease at being forced into a mold (a mold of norms, values, etc. embedded deeply within society) that I don’t think are sustainable for human beings. This can’t be the only way.
[time & serendipity]
Time. Time. Time. Speaking of timing. Really, the lesson life is trying to teach me right now, at this specific point in time, is that everything boils down to timing. I got into a car accident about a month ago. I also witnessed and intervened in a robbery… about a month ago. (Longer story for another time.) Of course, I was incredibly stunned and shaken up after each of these events. My mind instantly began replaying the stream of events that led those two situations. Had I gotten onto the expressway a few seconds later, this wouldn’t have happened. If I had paid with cash instead of a card, this wouldn’t have happened. If I had continued driving straight instead of turning right on Racine, this wouldn’t have happened. If I had woken up five minutes later in the morning, this would not have happened. It is a dangerous game, toying with what if’s.
But no. I made the decisions that I did, and the outcomes manifested themselves through those two quite alarming situations. It struck me. (I’m always being struck by something!) Everyday haphazardly, we, out of luck, bypass things (let’s call them…opportunities if they’re good, tragedies if not), both amazing and horrific. (Meeting soulmate, facing death, running into a person you haven’t seen since you were 10, etc.) We are constantly missing out on what if’s or what could have beens. Because that’s how time works. The right (or wrong) forces somehow align to produce the output, life as its unfolding in front of us. What am I trying to say, what am I trying to say? A lot of what happens in life, feels, like truly a coincidence.
I think this is a good time tell the story about how I almost died.
[death]
It was Christmas Eve, probably 2012 and I'd just gone to see Meet the Focker's with my mother and sister. If it was 2012, I had to be a sophomore in high school. Bittersweet Symphony (by the Verve) blasted through my headphones and as I stared out the window, snow flurries fell from the sky onto the five lane highway. (If my taste in music at 15 or 16 says anything about me, it’s that I was a very weird kid.)
All of a sudden, my mom begins to lose control of the car. Our car, located in the middle lane of the expressway, begins turning, turning, turning. As we’re turning, now just about perpendicular to the shoulder, the Verve still in my ears, I recognize a semi-truck, headed straight for us. Yes, a 16-wheeler is headed for the tiny black truck protecting my mother’s, my sister’s, and my own living body. By the grace of a split second, the semi-truck passes just as we complete our turn, a half revolution, facing the opposite direction of traffic, but somehow, perfectly on the shoulder of the expressway, not a dent to the passenger side of my mothers car.
Timing.
Of course I was hysterical and spent the next few days awakened in a way that I had never been in this life. (I guess that’s what a near death experience can do to you.)
But so back to everything. Timing and money, timing and serendipity, death. All this questioning, I think, (I’m always trying to get at the root of things) stems from the fact that I’m going to die eventually. No revelation. And so when you think about life on the spectrum, it puts things into perspective. What the hell is this all for, if we spend the majority of our lives putting ourselves through torture? (Okay, maybe not torture, but we choose to do things that our out of alignment with our deepest and inner core.) What is it all for? Especially, if ultimately, we allow everything else to lead us away from ourselves? The self being the true embodiment of our passions, dreams, and visions for this place.
Final thing I will talk about, I promise. (this is how I think. all. over. the. place.)
[escape rooms]
I went to an escape room for the first time last Friday. I really enjoyed it. We escaped with two minutes to spare. I took me three days, but I started to piece apart the larger metaphor of that experience. What sort of puzzle I’m stuck in trying to solve in this life? (We’re stuck in our own escape rooms.) Trying unknowingly to figure out all the right things and clues to properly escape it all. Society. A system and structures and norms that enclose and shrink us (our dreams, our desires, our wholeness) rather than allow us to live free as human beings. (see the end of [time + money]).
I often daydream about leaving. (Not because I hate anything about where I am right now, but because the ability to seamlessly navigate the world (internally and externally) with ease, without limitations, is true freedom to me.) I often daydream about going to some shore somewhere and chilling the fuck out. For like a year or more. Fill it doing things that I would do forever if I could. Read. Write. Enjoy the planet, a miracle, a product of 4.5 billion years of evolution. Connect with more human beings on a deeper level. That sort of stuff. Obviously, I can’t do this. Or I place the limitation on myself that I can’t. I don’t know, maybe one day I’ll figure it out. But I’m not there yet.
I’m bad with endings, so I’ll stop here.
Final thought. So I took photography last semester and the picture is one I took in Feb 2018 for final project (What You Did When You Did Nothing). It is one of my favorite pictures I’ve ever taken. Partially, because water. Partially, because solitude… there are many ways to be alone.
I appreciate you, thank you.