Strength

I've been thinking a lot lately about strength.  True strength and perceived strength, mental and physical, the whole shebang.  Very soon now, I will be shouldering a ~30-pound backpack.  Carrying my house on my back.  I would be lying if I did not admit that I have extremely trepadacious feelings about carrying my 30-pound house on my back for three months.  I have serious doubts about my body's ability to do this on a daily basis.  I think it's going to get very heavy, and very old, very soon.

Then there is the other, more important, aspect of strength that is going to come into play on this trip.  The strength to say "okay, it's not perfect."  "Okay, things didn't go my way today but I am still going to have a good day tomorrow."  "Okay, it doesn't matter if that shopkeeper was rude to me, if I got confused, if I got lost, if I made an ass of myself."  That whole mental fortitude thing, which honestly has never been my -- well, strength.

When I think of this trip, I am afraid of everything from bedbugs to not being able to sleep because of dorm-mates' snoring, to being mugged and/or getting my passport stolen.  And a hundred other things.  I'm afraid this trip was an irresponsible foolish venture.  I'm afraid I will squander my money unwisely.  I'm afraid that these three months will fly by in a dream and before I know it I'll just be right the heck back where I started.

I believe I present myself, to my family and friends, as an exceptionally "strong" person.  I have been told such.  A friend called me an armadillo once.  This is an image I have cultivated -- sometimes intentionally, often not -- for most of my adult life. In fact, my deep dark dirty secret is that this cultivated image is almost never how I actually feel.  I just fake it.  Really, really well.

Recently, a series of events has served to teach me exactly how far I have to go before I actually learn to practice all that I preach.  The lesson has come at the cost of a small emotional ding, mostly taken out of my pride because really, seriously, I should have freaking known better.  It's no big deal, in the grand or even the tiny scheme of things.  In less than a week I will be in Paris with the person I love best, and really, what irritates me most is that this emotional mosquito is distracting me from things actually worthy of my attention.  I guess its a good thing mosquitoes are easy to swat, and their stings never last very long.

Strength.  For a long time I thought that having strength meant I was the baddest, toughest broad in the bar.  The one who took no shit from anyone.  It meant knowing how to throw a punch or deliver a perfectly timed zinging verbal jab.  It meant protecting yourself at all times -- especially those most vulnerable organs -- the heart, and the mind.

But I'm not in my 20s anymore, and keeping all that shit up is frankly exhausting.  And I learned a long time ago that the same antics that earned you fame and aplomb when you are 25 will not have the same affect eight years later.  Maybe strength is not raging against the dying of the light after all.  Perhaps it really is just plain more graceful to go gently.  Maybe it's really not entirely necessary to settle every score, to always be the last man (woman?) standing, even at cost to yourself.

All this, of course, is not some sort of life-changing manifesto.  If there is one thing my year in Georgia taught me, it is that people, at their core, do not change.  Or maybe it's just that I don't.  I have utterly no doubt in my mind that a time will come where once again I will lash out meanly, will make damn sure that a) there is a fight, and b) I win.

I can just hope that this fight will be against my backpack or a train schedule, because that might actually prove to be slightly productive.

But whatever.  Right now I have to go and use some power tools to create something beautiful.

PS:  I have been having an utterly bomb time this summer, make no mistake.  Summer retrospective forthcoming.

Dog-Days of August

So Paris is just over three weeks away...

I have reached the inevitable period I call "cold gut."  It's kind of like cold feet, except that my feet are fine but I do feel a very physical ball of hesitation, second-guessing, and trepidation taking up residence behind my navel.  I knew this was coming -- it always does -- and that is exactly why I booked my non-refundable one-way ticket several weeks ago while still riding the initial euphoric wave of excitement and theoretical boundless possibility.  So turning back now, you coward.  Suck it up.

In part, it is the near-total lack of planning that is making me so uneasy.  I am supposed to be learning how to be more spontaneous and accepting, figuring out how to go with the flow.  (Which is something I have always been particularly terrible at.)  Except that I know myself, and know that I am going to emerge from a long bus or train ride, feeling dazed, exhausted, and lost, and I am not going to feel at all like searching for the very cheapest accommodation, or navigating the unfamiliar streets to find Back Alley Hostel.  I'm going to see a sign for the Hyatt, and I am going to check in.  And then I will order room service.  And before I know it, a week's worth of travel budget will have been blown (again), and I'll be coming home in October instead of early December.

Unless, of course, I'm actually able to keep a hold of myself, keep things in perspective, roll with it.  Keep calm and carry on, and all that.

There have been a couple of Eurotrip-related happenings I feel are worth sharing... first and foremost -- I will no longer be alone in France!!!  Yeah, I do remember how alone was kind of supposed to be the whole point, but my lovely and irresistible sister and I began to joke and then to dream and then to plan the idea of her meeting me in Europe for one or two of the trip legs, and last week after a 90-minute skype conversation it was just pretty much impossible that Eve would NOT be joining me in France.  So now she has a ticket too.  And the idea of hugging her at Charles de Gaulle has done a lot towards battling this cold gut that I'd been feeling.

The idea of romping all over Paris and the French countryside with my very own sister makes me incredibly happy.  There has been a lot of talk concerning wine and chocolate and cheese and crusty delicious French bread.  Between these adventures, we're planning on devoting an entire day to the Louvre (still not enough time to see everything but we cannot spend our week in Paris inside a museum).  There will probably be more shopping than I likely would have done on my own...

Egads, three weeks!  Planning procrastination is all well and good, but I guess we really better get on that Paris hostel thing...

Also, despite my arguments towards the merits of "wheelie-packing," the wise advice of several friends caused me to reconsider.  Europe does have a lot of stairs... and mud.  I recently had to carry a suitcase up two flights of stairs and did not like it much.  I mean, no big deal, but I sure was thinking about that Yerevan hostel with the fifth-floor walk-up.

So I bought THIS.  In pretty pretty bright blue.  Because I am a silly person, I am happy to have legitimized myself as a backpacker with an actual backpack.  Eve ordered the same style in green and silver.  It is important to coordinate such things with your travel partner. :)  In the next couple days, I want to do a trial-pack and see exactly how much will fit inside this thing, and how heavy it will be.

In current events news, I have been really busy.  I've been having no shortage of a good time with family and friends.  And the next few weeks are booked so tight it's redic.  My father and I have a box to make (birdseye maple and purple heart!), and there's also at least one more gaming one-shot (villains game!!), drinks and sleepovers and a Nat's game!  I need to buy supplies like a new bra and a netbook and Imodium.  A haircut needs to happen, for serious.  And somewhere in all of this I fully intend to have one more morning on the porch, celebrating life for no good reason with a good book, smoked salmon, and champagne.