Track Changes

I've met people who can look at their life and trace the trajectory of their personality. They chop up their life into categories and say things like, "Oh, that was my punk phase." While I recognize that we all go through phases, I've always found mine a little harder to pick out. For the most part I tend to like the same things, talk to the same people, and wear the same kinds of clothes. That's not to say I never change, just that it takes me longer to notice the divide between past me and present me. For the most part, I feel utterly, unequivocally, me. 

I look at what I wrote at the beginning of last semester, though, and I feel different. I had so many bright ideas. I wanted to blog more, write more. Now, everything I write here feels a little self indulgent. Who am I really writing to? What do I really have to say?

I don't know the answer to that. And for once, I'm not going to pretend that I do. What I've written here in the past doesn't seem untrue, just not true to my current self. For the first time in a long time, I feel the pull of my past selves -- the ones who were bright-eyed and who thought they could do everything on their own -- and I find myself tugging in the opposite direction.

I don't think I'll ever be the kind of person who sheds personalities like old skin. I'll always be the idealistic one who sets too many goals, who loves beautiful sentences, who wears stripes and tie-dye and sundresses. But there's also room for things to shift, and for them to settle in a slightly different place.

For now, I'm fine with picking them up where they fall.

Things I liked at the beginning of 2017:
-Fluffy blankets
-Huge books with epic stories
-Thinking about geological time
-Medieval illuminated manuscripts
-Cuddling with dogs
-Skype calls with the one I love
-My new tea maker
-The OA (Netflix show)
-Miyazaki films
-Russian literature
-Microsoft Word jokes (see the title of this post)

Until next time.

On Being Lost

I've been thinking recently about the sensation of being lost. To me, it conjures up two very different emotions. The first is the kind of stomach drop feeling you get when your realize that you have no idea where your are. It's that feeling of being completely alone, and the desperation that accompanies the search for a familiar face, a landmark, something to mark your progress. The second association has more to do with voluntarily letting go, seeking the unknown and unfamiliar,  actually choosing to get lost.

More and more I find myself craving the unfamiliar. You could call it wanderlust, I suppose, but it feels deeper than that. As much as new surroundings can shock me out of my comfort zone, I crave change at the molecular level. For me, change has always been slow and almost undetectable. If you spoke to my former self, I think you'd find them remarkably similar to the person I am now. So many people find their past selves unrecognizable, and yet when I look back I feel like fundamentally the same person I was in the 5th grade: still idealistic, still shy in new situations, still inspired by beautiful words on a page. I suppose I should feel lucky. I've always felt grounded, held in place by the support system of my family and friends and my own sense of who I am and where I want to go. Is it wrong to wish for something as messy and difficult as losing yourself only to find it again, transformed?

I stumbled across a quote the other day that has haunted me ever since. It is a question posed by the Greek philosopher Meno, and it reads:

How will you go about finding that thing which is totally unknown to you?

It's a paradox wrapped in a question wrapped in a dare. How do you look for something you don't even have a name for? Looked at in a different way, it reads as a challenge to take that vital first step into the unknown.

This is something that's been going on inside me for a while, this twisting, this craving for uncertainty and transformation, and I think its finally reached its breaking point. How will I go about finding that thing which is unknown to me? I'll willingly choose to get lost. I'll smother my fear and be accepting of new experiences. I'll seek change in the same way I seek knowledge: by exploring. It won't be easy, and I don't want it to be. What I do want is to be surprised by the person I become.

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End Note: I feel I should credit my sources of inspiration for this post, not just because they helped shape my point of view, but because they are wonderful in their own right:

A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit

This interview with Jad Abumrad, creator of Radiolab

This blog post by Rachel Coker, who never fails to be an inspiration