Checkpoint, Month 1: August in Review

Currently, I am sitting on an Avanti West Coast train as it whisks me north from London to Lancaster. This Monday, I felt a sense of shock at realizing exactly a month had elapsed since I left the US. It has felt like I’ve only been gone a few days and, in some ways, this first month has felt like a micro-year. At the risk of sounding extremely cliché, I am learning so much every day about my project, travel, people, and myself that time moves differently, fast and slow at the same time. And this type of learning I’m speaking to is addictive; it's active, inescapable, and so entirely different than my courses at Middlebury. It’s having the privilege to stand at the bedside of a dying person and hold their hand, it’s being welcomed into spaces that as a pre-medical student with no degrees I never imagined being able to occupy, it’s realizing the tube to Upminster is also the tube to Tower Hill is also the tube to Dagenham East and I didn’t need to wait 15 minutes for the one labeled with my exact destination.

Up until this point, I have really only shared the bulk of what I have learned in the context of my project but there is so much more that I have gotten out of just this first month. So, in addition to continually sharing about my project, I will be using the passing of each month as a chance to write more intimately about the trip itself and my thoughts more generally. While I have a lot of fear about being this raw in writing publicly, I also have been craving a space to unload because as I learned the hard way this morning, dragging my luggage through the Tube, carrying everything on your own is hard…and extremely sweaty.

 

Challenges and Lessons Learned

The month of August was full of challenging moments. Specifically, I underestimated how much of a dive off the deep end I was taking when I was planning. London was the only place where I knew I would be living completely on my own and that, for the first week or so, the work for my project would be more meetings and conversations than consistent time with a single organization. When I designed it this way, I thought “It’s London! It won’t feel too different, and I’ll be so excited, it won’t feel like I’m alone at all.” Well, I was partially right and wrong. I was wrong because as soon as the plane landed at Heathrow Airport, it dawned on me that I was in a foreign country and would not be returning to my own for over a year. Then, it didn’t matter if it was London or anywhere else in the world. This fact was only made clearer when I arrived at where I would be staying and was away from the bustle of the airport; I was truly alone. I would be lying if I said that, overwhelmed by exhaustion, travel, and anxiety, I wasn’t paralyzed for a while. I knew I only had one task that day that I needed to do – I needed to get groceries. Somehow, even this felt daunting – which one do I go to, what should I get to last the week, knowing I’d have to pick a store that was cheap enough for my budget but also not so cheap that I couldn’t get what I needed. This was the moment it dawned on me: everything this year was my decision to make, for better or for worse. The feeling was intangible; it wasn’t quite sadness, or fear, or even loneliness completely but an overwhelming sense of the enormity of it all.

The weight of this came on quite suddenly but I knew that venturing for food was not an option. So I took my tote and took my first steps outside, headphones in, David Bowie blasting. And suddenly, as soon as the fear was there, it was gone, or at least quieter. My walk to the grocery store took me through a park, along the Thames, and into the noise of Putney. From that moment on, I would be lying if I said I never felt the enormity of this year sneak up on me. That first week especially, I woke up each morning and had to get used to the silence that was also filled with the recent memories of hard goodbyes. But each day, I ventured farther and did more; I found my footing and my excitement felt almost visible. So lesson learned: when this year feels overwhelming (which I’m sure it will again), go outside, be with myself where I am, and force myself out of whatever shell of emotion I am frozen in. Again cliché, but I've learned that you are never as alone as you might feel.

So with this newfound romanticization and excitement for this year, I encountered my next challenge: balance. As my project started moving at warp speed, I very quickly felt the difficulty of finding a balance between work and sightseeing, grounding myself and knowing time was limited, cramming it all in and resting, and learning my new identity as a traveler while also remembering home. After long days of work, I found myself exhausted, craving some self-care through exercise, cooking, and reading or unwinding with a phone call or show. At the same time, a voice in the back of my head reminded me that my time in London (and traveling this year) was limited; it also annoyingly reminded me that this experience is beyond unique, and I shouldn’t waste it on “self-care” activities because even if I was tired for a year, I would be settled knowing I did it all. And so I also dove into sightseeing: I saw almost every major park and garden, went to 5 museums, did two walking audio tours, and walked probably over two miles every single day. All while also making time for my non-negotiable self-care activities: journaling, exercising, writing posts, and cooking good meals. It didn’t take long to realize that this lifestyle would not be sustainable.

I started folding in more mindful space, which to be frank, still feels uncomfortable. Even one Saturday, when it poured all day, I felt guilty sitting inside with my book and having my only accomplishment that day be writing a blog post. There have been lots of little frustrations when trying to define what’s “most important this year.” Something as small as getting used to YouTube workouts with my resistance bands is a big change from my routine of lifting in the gym. But I remind myself that this year is not about that. I think the difficulty is this year and “what it’s about” will be a constantly changing definition and some days it will be more about rest than activity, more about connecting to the place I’m in than my project. I know that learning to strike a balance between my project, this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see the world, and also being human will be a year-long process.

In the same vein of balance, I have been slightly disappointed with my lack of creative output but I am trying to be kind to myself on this front. When I imagined this year and my travels, I assumed I’d be so inspired by what I was seeing, the people I would meet, and my project that I’d be writing a poem per day. However, most of the time, I feel almost over-inspired that poetry gets lost in the minefield of my thoughts, prose, and blog posts. I am writing more now than perhaps ever before but in different mediums. But I would like to connect back to my poetry as it’s always been a place for me to reflect and learn. I think also there may be some fear about the expectation that I have a book of polished poetry by the end of this year, an expectation that’s so absurd only I could have set it for myself. I think this next month I will try to be more realistic and write when things come to me, even if it’s just little, imperfect snippets. And then, much like when I was writing my creative thesis, on Sundays, I’ll set some purposeful time aside for poetry.

The final challenge I wanted to acknowledge was that of saying goodbye. As my time in London was coming to a close, I felt panic; I still had more to do, more to see. I felt settled in myself as a temporary Londoner and I felt at home. In such a short time, I had fallen in love with London – its expansive and ornate museums, endless gardens and green space, the way the pubs fill up on Sunday so people take their beers outside and line the sidewalk, and rides in an empty Tube car late at night. Something I’ve been reflecting on in the context of my project if you have read my previous posts, is the role memory plays in how we conceptualize death and dying. Memory and I have always had an interesting and tense relationship. I experience quite regularly what some might call FOMO but not because I am so extroverted and need to assert myself in every social situation; it’s more that I have a fear of missing out on the making of a moment, of missing an opportunity to look back on something fondly, of not being incorporated into the memory of those around me. It’s part of the reason I am so drawn to poetry and narrative, and the power they have to immortalize a moment or a feeling. I also have a sneaking suspicion it’s part of what draws me so strongly to the topic of dying and the ways that our memories both cease and live on after death. However, it's also the crux of a lot of my anxiety and fixation on missing a moment; this morning alone, I took a picture of the front door I’ve been living behind, my tube station, and even the key I’ve been using with it’s cute heart shaped lanyard. I’m terrified of forgetting these small things, of somehow not incorporating them into permanence. And because of this, I struggle to say goodbye, to acknowledge that I likely won’t ever again have this same experience, in this city, in this home, in this way.

But it’s something I’ll have to continue exploring – both in relation to my project and to myself – because each place I leave will be a micro goodbye not only to that physical space, but it’s people and the version of myself that existed there. While I will take the memories of each place I visit with me, I recognize it’s impossible to take every single thing – even now, I feel small, insignificant details flying out the window of this train. But I also know that in many ways, I myself am becoming a poem, a story, a physical place where memory is held. I can feel it more every single day, as I get more comfortable existing on my own and learning myself so much more intimately.

A very big London cheers to month 1. For now, though, I’m watching the beautiful English countryside zoom by as I race towards my first homestay and three very cute dogs waiting for me!

August in Review

Songs of the Month: Changes by David Bowie, Werewolves of London by Warren Zevon

Poem of the Month: How Most of the Dreams Go by Ada Limón

What I’m Reading: finished God’s Hotel: A Doctor, a Hospital, and a Pilgrimage to the Heart of Medicine, started Dante’s Inferno

In – sausage rolls, Waitrose’s Too Good to Go sourdough bread, apples and Nutella, Tom Felton, learning to use a gua sha, parks, solo coffee dates, Irish accents, Sunday roasts, Yorkshire pudding, Camden Pale Ale, long distance phone calls

Out – the Victoria line, lugging suitcases on the Tube, Itsu, big suitcases, the New Shakespeare Globe, the geese at Kensington Gardens, Peri-Peri sauce, looking right then left to cross the road