A lot's gonna change

Time, space, and capture the flag.

After a brief scramble to get into my work laptop, I joined my team meeting from Eastern standard time. My coworkers made polite conversation about the change in scenery from my usual blurred 500 square foot apartment in Seattle, asking if it was my parent’s condo. My boss cut in. “Do you ever miss your childhood home? Is it sad coming home and not staying in the place you grew up?”

The honest answer is no. Even though my childhood home was idyllic and stationary, on a cul-de-sac in the suburbs of north Raleigh, I’ve never found myself getting particularly attached to the places I live. I didn’t grieve my childhood bedroom, or the sandbox in the backyard. I moved 9 times between the ages of 18-22, never finding myself growing quite fond of anywhere I moved out of. Something about the inherent temporariness of the shitty, small places you live when you’re young developed, in me at least, a keen sense of awareness that the places we live are transient. You can’t paint the walls, and you have to spackle over holes to get your deposit back. It’s difficult to imagine putting roots down, entrenching myself in a logistical nightmare if I want to get up and go.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve developed gratitude for my childhood and the way I was raised. As a thorny 19-year-old, I would’ve never anticipated this development, sure my family was uniquely dysfunctional in ways only I could comprehend. Age has made me less hyperbolic. I look back on summer nights spent running around barefoot playing capture the flag with the neighborhood kids, walks to Lake Lynn to feed the ducks, play-doh at the kitchen table, pajama parties and summer trips to the beach, and wonder why I ever came to take that for granted. My parents are even critical of their parenting style, but I’m grateful I grew up with an emphasis on manners, a willingness to talk about feelings, parents who apologized when they made mistakes.

For the first time since I moved across the country, I went home for both Thanksgiving and Christmas this year. I made that decision before the first trip, which ended up being unexpectedly lovely, each day better than the one before. I’ve always had a problem with imagining my life in a place would feel like what a vacation there feels like. I forgot that my daily reality is fraught with obligations, alarms blaring before I’m ready to open my eyes, rushing out the door, getting caught in traffic.

I’ve lately tried to create pockets of novelty in the mundane, incentivizing myself to complete necessary but monotonous tasks in the manner by which one would feed a dog treats throughout an appointment at the vet, for example. I do this because I need to get these things done, and because I’ve convinced myself I won’t be able to otherwise. I watch TV while I fold my laundry, piling it up on my coffee table and couch, I listen to one of the many podcasts I’ve begun subscribing to for this very reason as I moisturize my body and apply my sunscreen, I’m embarrassed to admit I even bought a phone holder for my shower, so I can ensure this constant stream of media accompanies me through each waking moment. It took a few months for the realization to dawn on me that I have been drowning out every moment of every day, holding their heads underwater, until they come up for air, sputtering, in the intervals where I forget to put my headphones in as I go down the elevator, or blow dry my hair, or walk from my office building to the cafe. These moments are purposefully brief, and my mind drifts to the next moment where I can consume media, and what I will watch or listen to.

When I was home for Christmas, I had coffee with my longest friend. I sheepishly confessed this to her, and she admitted she sometimes feels the same way. We talked about our reluctance to meditate, our shared tendency to fill up our calendars. Finally, she looked at me and astutely said, “you want to be bored.” She explained that in her past life as a montessori preschool teacher, there wads a concept of allowing the children to get bored, to engage in unstructured play. On a cerebral level, of course I know the importance of allowing one’s mind to grow bored, the necessary of doing so to generate new ideas, or, at the very least, to generate tolerance of the reality that life is not an endless parade of amusements.

I’ve come to the conclusion that boredom is a prerequisite for change. That I need to create space to come up with new ideas, and space to try them out. I’ll start small - I’ll drive to work without listening to the radio, I’ll walk to the grocery store without my airpods, I’ll fold my laundry in my bedroom, without distraction. I’m doing this not as retribution for my limited tolerance for doing so, but as a practice, to create room for myself to think of new ideas. And even if I don’t, at least I’ll know I tried. I’m not a believer in resolutions, but I know that small moments can add up to large expanses of time, and I hope to do measure this not in time passed, but in time in between.