...to the Beach (rambling life lessons)

Prior to my week of isolation, the thought of it was intimidating, even to a lone wolf like me. Even the indirect socializing I so recently used to get from my job(s) was off the table. I imagined the anxiety that could sprout and flourish in such a state of alone, how it would spiral if I were not cautious and ever vigilant.

To my surprise, I found myself happy as the clam that lived in the ocean so very close to me supposedly is. I woke and rambled about beaches. I submerged myself in the water as deep as I could stand, which, in the mild winter, was thigh-high. I sat and sat and sat on the beach, with books, with a sketchpad, with a hat, with eyes closed, with a towel, with nothing at all. Only when the sun completed its descent in the early winter hours of evening did I reluctantly skulk indoors.

The weather was often balmy, by January’s standards. My environmentalist sensibilities were perturbed by this; my selfish individual ones were not. There was a fair amount of guilt for this, but shame and guilt are just constant reminders to let things go. 

I watched my thoughts pass as if they were on a reel, simple little sketchy things. The ocean has this uncanny ability to fill any cracks and fissures within you, and then brim you over. I thought about a great number of things, I suppose.

One, patience. I was once told not to pray for patience if I wanted it to be tested (because, evidently, there is no other way to build the patience muscle than for it to be exercised). This solitary week at the beach was not what I planned for or expected; I was to go on a great, cross country, liberating journey that would set me free from all my chains. Instead, external circumstances kept me closer to home than I wanted to be. At first, I sulked and clung tightly to my binds. 

Two, adaptability. The more I walked, the better the water felt. The cold of the water was no longer painful; it became comfortable. That notion translates to most other aspects of life as well. We become accustomed to what we surround ourselves with (so perhaps it’s wise to be careful what we allow into our circles in the first place).

Three, resilience. If I could have one wish for myself, it would be to be impervious. Impervious to what, you may ask. Everything! I’d shout. People have often likened me to fire, a heat that burns brightly. However, I think a more accurate analogy is to say that I am like water. I boil; I freeze.

But look at the ocean - look at the tide that continues and continues and just continues forever. Look at the river, flowing over and around barriers. Look at water fall from the sky; look at water as it is born and dies and is born again. 

...to South Carolina (launching anxieties)

The last several days, I have experienced mind to severe what-have-I-done syndrome, as I fit my (what I thought were) few remaining possessions into my car; as I leave my beloved houseplants in the hands of my brother; as I brunch with friends for the last time until next time and sort of wish I could just keep doing what I know; as my coworkers throw me a going away party and I feel more warm and loved and appreciated than I have in a hell of a long time and I just want to CLING to that feeling; as I drive down a familiar stretch of interstate One Last Time and think about how, the next time I drive down it (if there is such a time), I will be the stranger; as ex-boyfriends come out of the woodworks to question my plans and motivations; as the farms I want to wwoof on have delayed to no responses; as my mother goodheartedly takes me to the grocery store and stocks my car with canned goods, and I have a moderate panic attack because it's so very anti zero waste.

(Keep in mind that I am, laughably, writing this from a more or less familiar place.)

South Carolina is just a few hours south of my home state, the other Carolina. I've spent most, if not all, of my life coming down here to visit relatives, to hang at the beach, to get out of the North One because don't state lines just feel so claustrophobic.

I still feel close to where I've come from but also so far away.

I dug my heels in, metaphorically speaking, and protested and rallied against myself. I threw mind tantrums. I cried intermittently. But I got in my car, turned on my podcasts on, and left.

Am I proud of myself? Not yet. We'll see. I can say that I'm uncomfortable. I can also say that growth only ever occurs via various levels of discomfort.

I will leave you with a quote that I have been ruminating on for years, with advice I'd never once followed until now. 

"Go, because you want to. Because wanting to leave is enough."

     -Cheryl Strayed

Origin Story?

Sometimes, it's like the first decades of my life were lived in a fog, some state of dreaming. Why did I do the things I did? Why did I do them mindlessly, without questioning myself and those around me? How did I come to this place now? How can this passion exist without some known genesis? How was that fog cleared? How did I Wake Up?

It's hard to write about, because I don't know where to pinpoint the beginning, and shouldn't all origin stories have a beginning?

But that's not accurate; there was no exact moment. It was just a series of small steps after small steps until I realized, as if I'd been possessed by another person, that I was sprinting toward this goal - careening headlong down a path that I don't consciously remember choosing. Oh, sure, I'd choose it now, but this is now. I was not the person then, any "then," that I am now. Mostly, it's like slowly waking from sleep. Eyes are bleary, breathing is still slow, you're still half-covered in dreams. And then - bam - you're awake.

My dad took me on the camping trips with his boy scouts, when I was still young enough to attend without drawing too much attention to my girlhood. As early as I can remember, there were spending nights in sleeping bags in tents, hiking in various forests and mountains, dipping feet into clear and cold mountain water.

My dad would pick up garbage as we'd walk down the side of the road. Even then, as a small child, I'd wonder how it would get there in the first place. We traveled across the states. We moved to Africa for my parents' ministry. The planet became vast and expansive, and my young eyes took it all in, too juvenile to appreciate the treasures laid out before me.

The environmentalism came in stages after that. I am not proud to report that I went through several (what I will call) phases before settling back into woodsy environmentalism and realizing that my childhood self knew intrinsically what was up and that I should have listened to her all along. (Hindsight, amirite?)

In college came the waves - donating much of what I owned, only to go on various buying binges and repeating the processes over and over again. In college, came the awareness of organic food and what's recyclable and what's not, and how widely that varied county to county, city to city. I'd pluck plastic and aluminum out of trashcans, plant them in their proper homes. Now, I am ashamed to confess that I participated in "wishful recycling" - otherwise placing things in the recycling stream, hoping that I was doing the right thing rather than knowing so.

Post college came minimalism and environmentalism, again in varying degrees - slow step, slow step. Pause. Step again.

There came a time in my mid-twenties, when I was living alone, and was perhaps for the first time held solely accountable for the impact I had as a consumer, when I realized that there had to be a change in me. "I'll go zero waste one day," I thought, "but not yet, not today. I'm not ready to give up [this] and [that], because [insert various excuses]."

It was the day I learned that the city I lived in would no longer be accepting glass that the shift occurred. "If not today," I asked myself, "when?"

Momentarily, I'd fallen into despair. It felt like we were not standing still; we were moving backwards. "Can't recycle glass?" I lamented. "What are we to do?"

Um, not use it at all? And so that day, a sort of resolution was formed inside of me, but it wasn't spontaneous, not exactly. It was more like the awakening of something that had always lain dormant and had been waiting for the catalyst, the call to arms, the signal to Wake Up.

What was an interest became a passion became a conviction, a moral code by which I now live my life. What was a spark became a fire, a raging thing that burns brightly. There is no point bemoaning past actions, mistakes I made in my ignorance; there is only now; there is only the future that comes after this now.

No, I can't tell you exactly where this journey began, but I suppose it doesn't matter, because I have no intention of backtracking, of ever returning to that beginning.