Thank you for your return. It has been a long while, filled with a long time of me doing nothing. Now I’m doing lots and we are back. I just want to mentally prepare you — the reader — that this entry is the most discombobulated in a good way. I would define it as a soliloquy of sorts, written as a rambling of the mind for one’s self. I would consider this a blog/personal public journal now. I am starting the newsletter up again with new intentions: writing more personal, vulnerable, revealing, bare, unfiltered content.
Subscribe at your own risk.
WHY. A good question. I have embarked on a journey with no end. An open-ended adventure with which I —
I can’t write anymore. That much is clear. I haven’t written to write in a creative explorative sense in quite some time. The energy hasn’t been there, fuel for the fire lost in translation. An empty page. Good grief. Not the wave. I wanted more for myself and my immediate future.
Pandemic choices that I wouldn’t have made without the open-endedness that manifested in my life due to COVID. I’m sure you understand what I mean deep in your soul.
I have had no moments of clarity, no revelations, no life changing events.
I had a plan, full-time internship for summer 2020, commute for fall 2020, part time internship the following spring, and repeat. I would graduate completely on time with more than enough job experience and a super long resume. Obviously that plan blew up in my face, to say the least.
To recap my general quarantine history I have been living in the Adirondacks since March in an uncomfortable amount of isolation for an unnerving amount of time. I had a job from July to October. That was somewhat of a life saver and newness in my immediate experience but overall it became monotonous. Not mentally challenging enough.
So here I am. Reporting live from Seattle. I have put myself on my own journey. Feeding the fire that became a slow burn. Drowning the timber in gasoline with the hopes of setting the structure a blaze.
An earthquake. I’m trying to make the ground shake. The ground already shook though, everything collapsed and fell into a cavernous abyss. So I am trying to rebuild.
I have never been in such a situation where the options are actually completely endless. I am not in school, not technically living anywhere at all, not currently employed seriously, and not involved in any sort of romantic commitment. So voilá here we are.
I could do anything in this moment, like actually. So I am just doing anything, which has manifested itself into this trip out to Seattle, Oregon, California and eventually Hawaii.
I hope the plan changes completely — not that there is one — but I hope that the make-shift open-ended plan changes course. I hope that things go in a direction that I never expected. That I experience and see things I never would have. Which is already somewhat true. Here I sit in Seattle, a place I have never ventured to, with familiar faces but also those I would have never happened upon without this time.
It is pleasant to have positives arise from such negative events. To have order turn into chaos and evolve into good chaos. I needed more chaos ultimately. I have never been so stationary so isolated, and I guess we all haven’t but being in the Adirondacks isolated from friends and normalcy carried a lot more weight. I was basically displaced from my home. I definitely understated that. Nevertheless, the social and physical environment of the Adirondacks was too static for me. It is a beautiful place to live and reside but such a stark difference from living in the East Village with constant stimulation and movement. While it was relaxing and carried some excitement, it ultimately could never be enough for me.
I find it so peculiar that some people can live and die in the same physical space. How could one ever. That would never satisfy me. So I guess that minimal amount of static stationary time needed to be combated in my mind with being completely operating, active, and kinetic.
As well as the isolation. Being alone so much created the need — as it did for us all — to be constantly in someone else’s company. Throughout this whole trip I will be staying with friends so that will also be directly counter-acted — while being as COVID safe as possible.
That's the gist of it I think. In my mind I sat down to write something that made more sense and had more direction but it definitely correlates that my writing doesn’t make sense and neither does this moment in time.
Fuck it — is basically where I’m at. Why would anyone do anything the way they have always been doing it. I am making an active decision to do things differently. To break the work-live-die, get-this-degree-for-no-reason kind of mindset. Destroying the capitalist mold is how I have begun to look at it. I feel no rush to finish school anymore or get things going. I have always wanted to travel and live and experience but it was always an “Oh I’ll do that after school” mindset. Why though. Why wait. Why linger and waste time unless that is completely what you want to be doing in that exact moment.
There are other circumstances and factors at play — I totally get that. For me those things just fell away into nothingness and I am fortunate enough to have the opportunity to do this right now. Fully-funded by me though, I worked hard to gift this to myself — just to put that into the aether.
There is no rush for anything. This felt like what should happen for me, so it did. It felt easy at this moment and no stress. Going back to school though felt like the ground was collapsing out from under me — earthquake part two. I just started to ask my soul why I would put myself through that much mental turmoil when it clearly wasn’t what I could handle.
I have the time now to simply live and reinvent what I want my future to be in a completely abstract way. But thinking about it now, I always had the time to change things if I wanted them to change. And I did change them when I needed to. Listen to your gut is the main takeaway. And don’t do things you don’t want to do. Why just get the degree to get the degree to then live your life. Why not live in this exact moment and do what you want in this exact moment. You could die tomorrow.
I think these are things I have always known and believed but the real life application only just became clear.
I intend to learn, reflect, and grow on this peregrination — by definition a journey, especially a long or meandering one. So this is the first of many realizations and entries into my brain child of a newsletter.
Thanks for coming.
Mhm. Thats that. I gifted this moment to myself, manifested it into my life — I’m sure of that. Give me recommendations for activities, travel advice, unconditional love, and company if you are also venturing or out on the west coast.
All my love to you always,
Isabelle