mix tapes
If you close your eyes and breathe deep, relax reality for a moment, sitting in the greenhouse here can almost feel like summer sun. You can sit there, clothes growing damp in the humidity, air handlers a low rumble of constant comfort, and flex your toes in anticipation of the green grass they will feel in a few months. Not yet, though - so you sigh gently, come back to your present, and quietly celebrate your brief trip elsewhere.
I spent the night putting together mix tape (CDs, actually, but I still like the sound of a mix tape better) playlists in the greenhouse. For a change, the songs were for no one in particular, just gathered against a loose collection of differing themes. Generally, when I use others’ words for my own, I’m focused on a particular friend, crush, or lover (and occasionally all three wrapped into one). Those moments feel like the creation of art - complete abandon and attention paid to the meaning and feeling that the songs carry, a mission made easy be the resolute passion toward the playlist’s target.
As of late, I’ve had no particular aim - no burning goal in my future of person or place. Instead, there has been a theme in my life since making the decision to come here over a year past. A theme of calm orientation toward the passage of time, toward the unknown of next year.
For certain there have been moments of near panic (in bouts of insomnia in the wee hours) where I struggled to determine the great “what-next?!?” that many of us struggle with. I have spent a great deal of hours both in excited thrall at possible futures and light dread at worried outcomes. Overall, however, I return to the feeling that enveloped me last July.
One year ago I was involved in the first full-time, salaried employment of my life. I had managed to settle in to a world of permanence - of a job, home, and world with no end date in sight, no contract termination to spur the next adventure. It was a good life and taught me a great deal of lessons but I found consistently that something was not right. The urge to move on, particularly related to my work, was strong.
Over time, previous dreams of Antarctica wound their way into my head - the winter season that I had not yet had a chance to do, that I had walked away from in my attempt at a more settled life. I started to pursue jobs at the bottom of the planet again, not entirely certain of whether I was going to take them or not. I struggled a great deal to find the happiness and comfort I was craving but always saw it elsewhere, not in the place I was.
Calm came, however, when I made the decision to quit my job, to move on. Because of the timing of the hiring process for the Antarctic, I did so without any guarantee of work or home at the end of last August, at the end of my settled experiment. That calm was manifest in the knowledge of moving toward satisfaction in my life, in learning to again listen to my whole self (not just my head) in decisions about my future.
I did not know what the outcome would be - no specifics were available to me. I did not have a guaranteed home, income, or work but I had no doubt that I would be well set to roll with the punches of what was to come. Should Antarctica have not worked out? I’d use what savings I had to find another path, to push to another ideal. The calm was that of confidence of path, even if the path was uncertain.
I’ve been in many moments of my life where I knew very well the direction I was headed and did so with fortitude and strength. I will gladly accept moments like that again in my future. The strength that I am finding in patience with the great unknown - well, there’s a tenacity there I’m new to. My future is yet undetermined, my path unclear, but the options are all intriguing and my confidence in my ability to provide for myself and to thrive are at a solid, even keel.
I have always felt right with the world when in the midst of a powerful love or at the beginning of a new adventure - that’s an easy fix one can quickly become addicted to. Feeling right with world in the middle of the long haul? That’s escaping the hold of previous dependencies for the freedom of enjoying the present.
It’s not perfect in the ebb and flow of confidence and future but it’s a welcome addition to my life here, to my psyche, to my eventual pursuits, and toward the patience and open eyes I’ll need when I next try to settle in one place for a spell.
I’ll again welcome the passion of a resolute path when it comes my way. In the mean, I’ll be glad to cull the larger picture for memorable moments and to write my story from the broad swath of an open theme. I’ll mix tapes of others’ words for traveling the unknown road toward the sunrise.