All day I have felt the need to write. Felt the need to release something... I feel like I have an incredible amount of unfocused energy in my body and it isn't doing anything positive. In fact, I think about it, get overwhelmed and then shut down completely and get pretty down on myself.
Its times like these that I really miss living in the mountains. Literally out my back door were trails. It took no more effort than putting on shoes to leave and just walk with nothing other than the wind, trees and dirt under my feet to keep me company. Oh, and music. Hiking while listening to some really beautiful scores is my absolute favorite thing to do. When I am anxious, if I have to get into my car and drive to a trail head, especially with the roads as messy as they were today, then I have already lost interest. Walking around my neighborhood doesn't really do it for me. So instead of anxiously switching from my book to a movie to my phone for another few hours, I got in the bath, put some classical music on and opened my computer. I have several travel posts started but then we go back to the lack of focus issue... its Thursday, so... maybe a throwback Thursday post! Those are always fun. I don't have a lot of archived photos on my laptop so I open the book of faces and scroll through all my old photos. Found a few gems...
Its times like these that I really miss living in the mountains. Literally out my back door were trails. It took no more effort than putting on shoes to leave and just walk with nothing other than the wind, trees and dirt under my feet to keep me company. Oh, and music. Hiking while listening to some really beautiful scores is my absolute favorite thing to do. When I am anxious, if I have to get into my car and drive to a trail head, especially with the roads as messy as they were today, then I have already lost interest. Walking around my neighborhood doesn't really do it for me. So instead of anxiously switching from my book to a movie to my phone for another few hours, I got in the bath, put some classical music on and opened my computer. I have several travel posts started but then we go back to the lack of focus issue... its Thursday, so... maybe a throwback Thursday post! Those are always fun. I don't have a lot of archived photos on my laptop so I open the book of faces and scroll through all my old photos. Found a few gems...
This was my favorite. It's totally unrelated to the direction I am taking this post, but I wanted to add it regardless. I was about a year old on a day like today, the first big storm of the year. My grandfather lashed an apple box to a sled and ran up and down the street. I feel like I can almost remember it, or a memory similar to it. I still have that sled, actually. This reminds me that I did have a family. I do have memories and gobs of photos to prove it. They were very real, and very loud and very loving. I miss being able to see and feel and talk to them though. Its a loneliness I never thought I would experience in my early 30's. They shaped me... made me who I am today. I do have them to thank for my love of snow, good food and nature.
Speaking of nature... this is a little over 10 years old and I am 100 percent certain it captured the exact moment I fell in love with Zion National Park. This is near the entrance to The Narrows. It became a bucket list item immediately and you know what? I checked that off this year. Finally! A year ago I attempted it, but was rained out. Safety first. So instead, I kind of sort of duplicated the picture from 9 years previous.
Its isn't my favorite photo by any stretch of the imagination, but it did make make me think. I get down on myself very easily. I'm pretty tough, and let a lot of things roll off of my back... but I am my own worst enemy. I can beat myself up spectacularly. But, in my attempt to post these throw back photos, I saw two very different girls. I thought about the journey I took from that first photo to the one taken in 2015. Everything I have been through and seen and experienced. Even now, I am a stranger to the girl in the second photo. If she knew what was ahead of her and what she would see and feel and love and hold onto and lose...all in the 12 months between trips to this very same spot, I think she would have broken.
But I didn't. A casual scroll through my photos between those 2015 and 2016 trips reminded me that while I lost a lot, had my heart spectacularly shattered by friends I'd given pieces of my heart too and more loss of lives... I also experienced and lived a hell of a lot of happy. I smiled through the tears. I got through because I was raised to be tough. I may be the only member still standing, but the example and influence of the family I had walk next to me every day. Don't you dare take your living relatives for granted friends.
The hurt doesn't really ever go away, its going to live with me one way or another. It's me choosing to not dwell on it that is the defining lesson I'm learning on this evolution of a thought post. My brain and its anxiety and depression is an ever evolving beast. Seriously, who thought it was a good idea to leave me in charge of my own thoughts?! But... when I give myself the chance to look past the ache, I'm pretty damn proud that I am still standing on my own two feet and anxious to see where my next set of adventures takes me. Just one thing though... no more death. I don't want any funerals in my near future. Please and thank you. Cheers!
If you are curious... here is a few of the travel posts I am working on. In no particular order...
More London... so many places!
Cambridge/York
Glasgow
Blackpool
Wales
Hastings/Dover
Seattle, WA
Banff NP
Coeur d'Alene, ID
Gibsons, BC
Sawtooth NRA
LA, CA
Red Rock Canyon, NV
Kings Canyon/Sequoia NP
Yosemite NP
Zion NP
Fort Tryon in Manhattah
High Line/ Chelsea Market
Hamilton Grange/ Grants Tomb
Craters of the Moon
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