If there is one resounding thing I have learnt on my travels, it is expect the unexpected. And not just in a good way - probably more realistically the opposite. This is something I'm not particularly akin to doing. I tend to live in the future and also have escalated hopes of it's potential. This in turn almost always leads to disappointment in one form or another. At times I put it down to creativity - perhaps I have an excess of imagination, therefore I envision wondrous outcomes that can never quite be lived up to? Yet the more astute of you will say - that this doesn't in fact account for the potentially negative scenarios I could just as easily conceptualise. Yes well, I couldn't agree more. Perhaps it is rather the decades of Disney and Austen-esque stories that drenched my adolescence like a sickly rose flavoured tiramisu that are responsible. Is it that I secretly can't escape the romantic notion of wishful thinking regardless of how logical I convince myself I am? Nonetheless I hope I'm not so much of an old dog that I can't begin to chip away at this old glass slipper.
Truth be told, no matter how positive and grateful I try and convince myself to be, I'm really struggling to relax and enjoy myself. There it is. I find holidaying hard. So sue me. New cities and scenarios, the stresses of travel (especially by oneself), language barriers, budgeting (not that much of this has been done until now), organising on the go, being completely out of my comfort zone and so much more. I thought not knowing what to expect would become easier, and that I would soften to it. But time and again these new experiences seem to be greeted with strain - I'm like a cat, and the world is combing my fur backwards. I'm not blessed with an easygoing, free spirit that can just float around making friends with everybody. It's not to say I don't want to - it's just that for me personally, I find it really difficult - like I'm going against every fibre in my body. But what kind of travelling is it if you don't experience some kind of challenge and growth?
So here I am in London now, happy to be reunited with Charlie again, but struggling with lack of routine and a home to call my own. I'm feeling very overwhelmed with the amount of stories I have to tell you all before they go cold, photos I must upload and university work I must do. (In case you didn't hear - I mucked up my papers by taking one at the wrong level, which means I still need another 30 points at 300 level to finish my degree. So work hangs over my holiday like an imposing storm on the horizon. Thank goodness I have a lovely lecturer who was willing to help me out, allowing me to take the paper by distance.)
London in itself is big and overwhelming. There are so many people that you can really feel your insignificance. Everything where you look, there is someone already doing what you what to do, and doing it well - which makes a shy writer/designer like myself want to retreat into a mossy hole in a brick wall and hide my ideas and stories away in the fears that the world doesn't need nor want them. But yesterday during my exploration of St Martins I came along a bookstore that was purely a children's bookstore. It had beautiful gold and silver lettering on the window saying 'WONDER' under which sat rows and rows of colourfully illustrated children's books. I shyly stepped inside and was instantly calmed by the bright faces of the works around me. I saw books from my childhood like Old Bear and Friends by Author/Illustrator Jane Hissey, I saw Paddington Bear, Winnie the Pooh, The Little Prince and many more wonderful books. It was standing in this store that gave me back my glimmer of hope. 'I want to be in this store,' I thought. 'Not just in this store standing and observing, but part of this store. I want the honour of intertwining my words and stories with these great works that adorn the walls - each a trophy in its own right.'
My body and mind can truly be fickle. Everyday I have to put up with it. Somedays I feel like I'm pulling it, a lump of squiggly Picasso-esque mess, by my teeth across mountains and rivers, and down abandoned railroad tracks. Somedays I just need to stop and breathe, other days I need I little push from behind. It is on rare days like this that I can look up to see others pushing and pulling their squiggly messes too, which makes me feel happy that my struggle is not alone.
So not quite a travel update. But they will come, I promise.
x
