Last Wednesday, I pulled a back muscle getting up from my living room’s rattan chair. Just one lift, and everything is misaligned. I couldn’t walk straight for days, but I was stubborn. I wanted to walk. I needed to walk lest I mentally and physically melt into muck.
So, it was. Walking with a constant pain or discomfort on my back and legs made me hope and pray to all the gods that I will retain the ability to walk and move (sprightly even if slowly in old age, if I live long enough) until the very end of my life. Please, universe, and thank you.
I’m just a week and a half away from a 3 day 2 night hike at Rinjani, Indonesia’s second-tallest volcano — and famously more difficult than Mount Kinabalu (which I’ve never been). It’s a crazy total of 20+ hours of hiking and trekking, topped off with what many call the “two steps forward one step back” ashy terrain lasting three six hours in a frigid zero degrees weather toward the peak. I am nervous and excited. I’ve never undertaken a hike of this degree and I’m looking forward to feel, really feel, what this means to both mind and body.
Then, I’ll spend a week or so bumming by the Bali beaches. Just not doing anything, which is to say, having the time I have longed for, to think and wonder and then talk it all out with Lyn.
But now, rest.
It’s been a weird past six months on the employment front. A first gig at one of those big MNC type things doing mid-managerial work; staying, because it will look good on your CV, which I actually believe is true.
I’ve spoken to some friends on this thing called work and almost all have said that “work is just work”, which really just means that they’ve stopped looking for that thing they love at work and instead, find the time and space to do that outside of work.
So, I’m having this monologue with my younger self. Younger self thinks I have sold out. Younger self thinks that I am not where I’m meant to be. Older self agrees. Older self says sometimes you follow a curiosity even if it wasn’t what was expected. Older self says you’ve worked hard to get to where you are right now and haven’t you learned some fundamental thing here? I have I have.
At least I don’t feel stuck. I just feel a little lost, which taken into an analogy of walking, isn’t such a bad thing, older self says to self.
Ends.
### Beautiful Finds on the Internet ###
History, urban planning, and city spaces all in this beautifully-made video
Craig Mod’s The Return to Pachinko Road
I’m mentally walking alongside Craig Mod’s 600KM walking journey from Kyoto to Tokyo. Absolutely delightful and makes me want to walk the hell out of things.
Something he wrote about walking:
I consider a walk like this — continuous, uninterrupted, solo, rigorous — to be foundational and grounding. We rarely use ourselves up in 100% opt-in kinds of ways. Instead, we are used up by everything and everyone around us, often in spite of us, and forget what it is to spend a day utterly exhausting a body, moving through the world on our own terms.
Subscribe to his dailies here.
### xxx ###
good atlas 
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