The Loneliness I Choose/ The Art of Traveling Without Ambition

(old piece)

I am finally convinced, after years of fighting it, that loneliness is part of our human experience. The people I like the best are the ones who can't, won't dim the discomfort of questions and doubt. I am never sure if I am my best, happiest self when living my life on my own terms. All I know is that I do not know how else to live it. Along the way I have learned that the adjective brave is awarded freely, even to actions that are steps away from cowardice. I think of my leaving home, I think of my time in graduate school, I think of moving and I know that there is more privilege and necessity in these periods than there is brave.

Popping In, Hey Hey You

My wonderfully apt shower curtain

It's been a while hasn't it? I'd count the days except they would turn into months and I'd tell you all the things that changed except it would become a book. The best parts? I moved into my own apartment, I have my own room AND a spare room, I have grown up furniture. My recliner now has a companion love seat and I have a dresser. The dresser is gorgeous, it has a mirror that brings the room together. I enjoy having a room of my own in an apartment of my own and it has felt both natural and decadent, a little whisper of how marvelously selfish of you? The feeling of waking up and wandering into the living room and using the coffee maker to make myself a cup of average coffee (my skills are still sub par), of eating a meal at the table, so simple and yet so significant.

Day Multiple

It's been a few days since I posted last. Which isn't to say I've forgotten to be grateful -- I am grateful. Works goes on, I've been meeting friends (and still calling myself grumpy cats), the apartment search continues. I am getting better at taking notes using my stylus and reducing the amount of paper in my life. Work is a little bit more balanced (grateful for the good people hired :)). I met friends from my fellowship today (I meet them often, this was just a subset I spent a lot of time with) -- it was such fun, time flew by and I remembered why I enjoyed it -- I enjoy easy company with friends, it is when we run out of conversation and silence that when it gets harder. My days have a happy little ribbon tied to them, conversations that I look forward to. That's all folks :)

Day 8, 9 and more?

Obviously it's been busy and I've not really been posting (in other news I've also not been on Facebook and that has been good for me). My apartment hunt goes on and it is taxing, but that's always true. The weather has been absolutely lovely and for that I am thankful. I am trying to learn how to take notes with a stylus. I listen to some interesting podcasts every day. Basically I try and I am grateful for the trying.

Day 6 and 7

It has been busy, busy enough that there was little time to write and post this. But today is Saturday night, I have had one of the best naps of my life and I am wide awake in a way I never am in the week. I am a little bored and not in the mood to work. To be honest, I am not in the mood for computer screens either. I've been apartment hunting and that was the only thing I left the house for today.

Day 5, calmly chaotic

Today started early. Early mornings are tricky for me but I made it to work. We were out for a site visit and when I returned to work, my very nice colleague had gone to the new gym that opened close to us and got me a free yoga mat as instructed (I don't need it, I just wanted some free swag). I had a chance to attend an event about equitable funding, take the Metra, and meet a friend who I am very fond of. It was a day full of a lot of different things but even though the sum of it felt chaotic, I did not let it get to me. I have the fleeting thought that I'm forgetting to worry about something, that I shouldn't be as calm as I feel. But that will pass. I'm absorbing every single details of the Poirot series on Netflix. I am grateful today for how rich my life is in the different kinds of experiences I have, places I go to and people I meet. I am also glad I am occasionally able to remember how meaningful each individual piece even if the sum is overwhelming.

Day 4, rested and thoughtful

Despite my usual waking up to work emails routine, I caught a quick second nap and woke up rested. Take a second with that, I woke up rested. It doesn't happen. My whole work day had no meetings and I got a lot done, while not on constant alert. Being constantly hyperaware is exhausting and I've only recently started to notice how unconsciously tense I am. It was a calmer day, it was a good day. I made some progress with hiring for the team I am building and it reminds me that I am doing something here. Days like this, I don't mind the long hours. Towards the end, I was chatting with colleagues and it was convivial, a pleasant in-between moment between leaving work and being back home/outside. I'm out in the field tomorrow and that will be interesting -- I think the key to this week has been the number of unexpected and new experiences. They keep me curious. I think day 4 was full of more aware gratitude :)

Day 3, still trying, still here

A-comforting-background-noise-sort-of-gratitude

I woke up today, dealt with lots of work emails and fell asleep. Of course I ran late and usually that makes me twitchy. I tried to stay calm and I was grateful not to myself, but the work space that allows for the occasional lapse. I had a long day at work and my favorite, most productive moments are after the office empties out. I was irrationally grateful for the Uber driver on my ride home not wanting to talk. I type this right before bed (hello wicked vivid dreams), knowing I need to wake up in five hours.

Trying something new/Days of gratitude

I want to say it has been a strange year but to be honest, it has been just like the others. Mundane with a few exciting moments, lonely with a few friendly faces, a constant thrum of self-deception with the occasional moment of brutal honesty.

Still if I pause and think about it, I am 30 years old. I am very different from who I imagined I would be but I also make the same mistake (or versions of it) very often. In conversation with a friend recently, I did that thing where you say the worst thing you think about yourself to see if your friend believes it -- my friend did. I am a judgmental bitch. It is what it is, but it made me a trifle sad and got me thinking about some of my habits, which are just remains of a different time in life. 

Poems for my life

'Someone had blundered.

Theirs not to make reply,

Theirs not to reason why,

Theirs but to do and die.

Into the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.'

This is one of the first lines of poetry that I remember. I am pretty sure I was in the 7^th grade when I read this in a book of poems that had made its way to me randomly (the poem is Charge of the Light Brigade by Tennyson if you are curious). Poems speak to me, just like I imagine pictures may speak to you or songs make your heart skip a beat.  Every once in a while a random line of poetry will pop into my head, almost like an excerpt from a life. Except this is my life. Over the years I have come across poems for all sorts of occasions and feelings and people and lives. I share them online, sometimes I email them to friends, occasionally I imprint them on myself. In this post, I am going to put them all together in a list to which I can keep adding. I hope it brings you some happiness.

Adrienne Rich

From an Atlas of the Difficult World

I know you are reading this poem which is not in your language

guessing at some words while others keep you reading

and I want to know which words they are.

I know you are reading this poem listening for something, torn

between bitterness and hope

turning back once again to the task you cannot refuse.

&

In Those Years

But the great dark birds of history screamed and plunged

into our personal weather

Brown Girl Sings the Blues

You Bring Out the UP-Walli in Me

You remind me of all these.

The forgotten, pushed away,

Hidden parts of me,

The lekin and the agar in me,

The abey and the oye in me,

The ab to ho gaya in me.

Clementine von Radics

Mouthful of Forevers

I am not the first person you loved.

You are not the first person I looked at

with a mouthful of forevers. We

have both known loss like the sharp edges

of a knife. We have both lived with lips

more scar tissue than skin.

You Bring Out the UP-Walli In Me

This is a poem by an unknown blogger that I found a long, long time ago on the Internet - the blog was something like Brown Girl Sings the Blues and it is long long gone. I am glad I copied the poem, it lives for me. If I took the weird white highlighting off the text then I lose the formatting and I did not want to do that.

You bring out the UP-walli in me,
The zari, gota, sitaraa,
The sweet, sweet bataasha,
The lilt of my (m)other tongue,
simmering under these words in me.

I play for you. For the twinkle in your eyes
when I rant in Hindi.
Kya hai.