A few weeks ago, I told a friend that I don't know where I'll be in two weeks. She asked me how I felt about it and if this uncertainty made me uncomfortable. I thought about it and there are multiple layers to it.
Some things are very clear to me - after some thought, consideration, and conversations with my friends, I know what I want to do, what my mission is currently, and what I want to create. While that is clear, the path to get there is very blurry. It's full of forks, obstacles, and temptations. There is no map to it. No standard instructions. No footsteps for me to follow. And I like that there are no footsteps. Otherwise, I'd be trying to live someone's life, and I don't want to do that.
So there was no travel itinerary on my plate and the uncertainty of my travel plans, where I'll physically be in two weeks, has frustrated me a little bit.
I moved to a new place after the Workaway and have had to "settle in" again. It's weird because you don't know how long you're going to be in that place. If you know you're going to stay for a month, then you know, for example, how much food you'll need to buy, you'll get a card for local transport, you can sign up for a monthly gym membership, make an effort to make new friends, and all the simple things that go with living in a place. But if you don't know how long you'll be there, 2 weeks or 2 months, then it's much harder to plan.
So all these things were going through my mind and I didn't know what to do. At some point I was actually thinking what's the point of all this and shouldn't I just buy a ticket to go home? It's been more than 3 months since I've been away, it's enough. I can be with my friends, I don't have to struggle to make new ones. I can speak my own language. Everything would be easy again. Going home, back to a safe, familiar space, those were my thoughts. I went so far as to look at flights. But shortly after, I stopped.
About 2 weeks before that I applied for a Creator Residency from Cabin. The opportunity appealed to me as soon as I saw it, because I've been part of this great community for a year and have always wanted to visit them in person. Also, I've never participated in a creator residency before, so it could be useful for me to work on my creative things surrounded by nature and good people. And funny enough, while I was already thinking about going home and finishing this trip, serendipity happens. The community voted and I got the most votes and thus a free month stay at their coliving in Austin!! That's when I said fuck it, I'm going to Texas. A new adventure will begin for me.
Interesting how life works. After that, my friend Laurel sent me an appropriate quote for this situation.
"The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper." - W.B. Yeats
I also find it interesting how differently we perceive stability. Now that I've been living nomadically for a few months and will be in one place, Austin, for a whole month, that's already very sedentary to me. For some, being settled means being in one place for at least a year, if not longer. But stability is really just an illusion that we create for ourselves. Especially in these times, there is no stability.
Coincidentally, when I started thinking about stability a week ago, a book on this topic found me while I started to dig deeper into ‘‘The Sovereign Individual’’. The book is called Future Shock and while I’m still at the beginning, it talks about the fast technological and societal development and how it affects us, professionally and personally.
“To survive, to avert what we have termed future shock, the individual must become infinitely more adaptable and capable than ever before. We must search out totally new ways to anchor ourselves, for all the old roots - religion, nation, community, family, or profession - are now shaking under the hurricane impact of the accelerative thrust. It is no longer resources that limit decisions, it is the decision that makes the resources.”
― Alvin Toffler, Future Shock
So I realize that dealing with such uncertain situations as I'm experiencing now only prepares me to better deal with all the hurricanes and shocks that will come in the future.
I'm flexible enough to adapt to many routines, work schedules, meals, etc., but I've found that there is one thing I'd like to keep if I could. That is my ritual of drinking 'Turkish coffee." It's a stable, home-like ritual that I still want to have. Although I love mate in Argentina and its rituals, it can't beat my coffee ritual. Maybe it's because it's one thing that connects me to my home. With the way my friends and family drink coffee. To not forget about home.