Tag Archives: relaxing

I sometimes wish my body operated like an iPod.

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Last semester, my creative writing professor asked us to go around the room and tell one thing we were good at.

The boy next to me said he made killer sausage and pepper sandwiches. We probably should have gotten married right then.

But seriously.

One girl said she was an expert relaxer.

And while the fifteen of us laughed and smiled and thought, “Isn’t that nice?” at the time, I know now that its something I am not.

I do not know how to take fifteen minutes or even fifteen seconds to breathe in and out. To make sure my body’s caught up with my racing mind.

The girl probably doesn’t know how invaluable that is, to be able to let go of all the worry and stress and move-move-move habits and just pause.

I sometimes wish my body operated like an iPod. I could pause at the calm moments and skip past the sticky situations. Repeat the ones I want to return to. And if I wanted to be a little spontaneous, maybe run around in the middle of a thunderstorm, I could set the preset controls to shuffle the songs.

My iPod won’t turn on anymore. Maybe that’s a sign from God that I’m driving myself into a ditch. That I forgot to recharge the battery and shouldn’t have let it sit in the glove compartment for half of the last semester collecting dust and scratches. Oops.

There was a time when relaxing was almost second nature to me. I knew how to compartmentalize my life into sections: working, running, school, collecting rays of sun by the pool. It was relaxing but structured.

Now, I’ve hit this snag where I want to do so much that I want to do and what I really need is to focus on one thing for more than 3.2 seconds.

I’ve been smacked in the face with at least three reasons why I should restructure my life and start tackling what I want. So I’m going to dive headfirst here and make up a list of things I want to cross off before graduation in 11 months. Before the Real World sticks its big hands out of its pockets and grabs hold of me and tries to smother me with the realities that come with college graduation: more bills to pay, loans to pay back, jobs to find, meals to cook, laundry to do.

(Don’t worry. I do know about paying bills and cooking and doing laundry. But there will be more of it, I am sure.)

I’m adding a tab for this list of mine and calling it 11 Months, 11 Items.

By the way, every month I send out a short + sweet newsletter brimming with cool finds related to the monthly theme. It'd be stellar if you subscribed. If it's not worthy, it doesn't go in the newsletter. That. Simple.

We trust a blindfolded 5-year-old with a Louisville slugger not to knock someone out; so why don't we trust a 21-year-old walking barefoot outside?

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My roommates yell at me if I go outside without shoes on. There’s always a reason. Someone had a house party last night and smashed beer bottles now litter the front lawn. There’s rocks and twigs and ice and — yeah, I know.

my cousin running along the shore, into the waves

The world is full of patches of black ice. We can’t see them, but then we’re spinning and we wonder how we could’ve been so oblivious in the first place. Because we cannot know what’s in front of us. Only that right now, we’re passionate about this one thing.

It’s not that I want to step on a shard of glass. Nobody does. But I want to be trusted. I want to walk barefoot.

Simple enough, right?

We trust five-year-olds to spin around blindfolded and not knock into the piñata or smack someone in the head with the Louisville slugger. So why can’t we trust a 21-year-old to walk into the street without shoes on?

A large part of me worries I won’t fit into the world. Because I would rather spend my Easter Sunday in a room with no air conditioning for 13 hours, coming home at 10 p.m. with dirty black feet and tired eyes. Because I would rather skip winter altogether and sit in an Adirondack chair, reading a novel with the ocean foam kissing my toes.

“Some days I want to live alone on the beach with a pad of paper and a pen,” I wrote three years ago. “I’d find the perfect spot, right where high tide hits. Not too far from the water so I could still hear it. And I’d write forever. There’s a lifetime of things to talk about.”

I went on.

“But then I have days like today when I just want 3 kids, maybe 4, and that chaotic life where I’m driving all over creation. Something where I wouldn’t have any time to think about what’s going on in my life, just that it’s happening,” I wrote. “I think that’s what would keep me happy.”

I won’t fit in. I’ll run in circles, undecided between wanting it all and none of it. I lose my roommates’ trust and I’ll accidentally step into the street without looking both ways. I can’t help but wondering if my transparency has worked in my favor.

No one should make you question yourself. No one should make you worry that you don’t have it figured it. Because nobody else does.

We’re all stepping into oncoming traffic, just in different ways. The black ice sneaks up on even the most cautious driver. There are an infinite number of moving pieces in the puzzle of the world, and we think we know the outline and where the one piece goes, so we try to shove it in. But it’s wrong. All wrong.

And so I’ll walk through the cool grass in the summer heat without shoes on. I’ll let the pavement blacken and callous the soles of my feet. Let the sun kiss the back of my neck. And time will wind down. Nothing bad will happen.

Trust yourself. Trust to know what you love and what you want and trust that nobody in this world ever really knows who they are or where they’re headed. All they really know, right now, is that they want to be where they are. That’s all we can know, isn’t it?

By the way, every month I send out a short + sweet newsletter brimming with cool finds related to the monthly theme. It'd be stellar if you subscribed. If it's not worthy, it doesn't go in the newsletter. That. Simple.