better than you think
It’s Spring but it snowed yesterday. Today the temperature is -3 degrees Celsius. The sun is shining so brightly and everything feels hopeful and optimistic in my brain. This morning Mar and I tidied the apartment: she did laundry and vacuumed and I did the dishes and scrubbed the stove. She left for the gym and I recorded a podcast episode. Then I left and headed to my parent’s house where I parked my car and hopped into my neighbour’s SUV and we headed to Coppins Corner for breakfast. These neighbours have watched me grow up and they go out for breakfast every weekend. They have invited me to join multiple times and it hasn’t worked in the past but last night I decided it was time we go together. We had eggs and bacon and toast and home fries and coffee and chatted about travelling and politics and Rosie O’Donnell. I told them I want to go back to Europe soon. Maybe I want to hike the Camino again. They told me to go and then to start school again. I think I will.
I got into a program for Law school starting this September. I told my neighbours it was the kind of application process I completed just to know I have another door open to me if I chose. Because sometimes I feel restless and right now is one of those times. Sometimes there are options we fight to have just to have the freedom to choose later. This was one of those. I knew I didn’t really want to choose that thing but I made myself go through the process just to know that I could if I wanted to.
I think what I want is to go travel again and then to start school again and it could be for art or it could be for journalism or it could be for political science. Do I have to know right now? No. I’ll know it when I know, you know?
The podcast episode I just recorded was about realizing that you’re doing better than you think you are, but just needing to be reminded of that from external sources sometimes. Yesterday I received some letters in the mail that reminded me of ways that I have always been. But sometimes you forget the ways you are already further along than you realize you are. Sometimes it takes someone telling you about how you’ve influenced them to remember that you’re doing better than you think you are. And I think I needed that.