Walking around Jenkinson Lake, it’s the Wednesday after Memorial Day weekend and almost nobody is here. The main sounds I hear is water lapping against the rocks and trees, the skittering of lizards as I walk past and wind blowing through the trees. As I’m soaking up the sunshine I can see butterflies flitting all around. There are separate trails here for hikers, bikers and equestrians. The hikers trail is closest to the edge of the lake. It is so quiet and peaceful here. The color of the water in the shallow arms of the lake is a beautiful emerald green, just striking.
There’s a beautiful waterfall here, only a 1 mile hike from the parking area.
I’ve got so many scattered writings for my gap year guide, things that come to me when I’m driving, listening to a podcast or by myself. I’ll write a quick note about it and add it to my stack of other notes I’ve randomly written. I need to sit down and actually expand on those thoughts, better yet take a few minutes later the same day when I scribble them down to just flesh out my thoughts, whether on paper or a voice recording so that I don’t forget what it was that inspired me. I think that’ll be especially helpful for moving me forward during these times where I feel stuck. For a while I’ve been posting something from my gap year guide notes once a week on a different page of my website, I haven’t figured out how to incorporate that into the blog. I’ve decided during this time that I’m at my sister’s house now that I’m done with my job interviews that I’m going to post at least one thing every day for my gap year guide. Some of the stuff I’ve written that I want to include are almost ready to go and just need minimal editing. Others are just an idea or scrap of an idea that I have to elaborate on and still others are kind of in between where I need to make the writing clearer or more interesting, adding details, especially about my personal experience. It takes me about an hour to get a blog post done depending on how much has happened. The gap year posts have taken anywhere from half an hour to a couple of hours. For so long I just thought of my website posts as this quick little thing, but something that takes one to two hours or more a day is a lot! I hope my writing is improving and becoming more interesting for people to read.
It’s felt good to try to express these things that have been on my mind and the ups and downs of my journey. Balancing between being grateful for just having this opportunity and all of the wonderful things that I have in my life that I got for no other reason except I was born lucky, and letting myself feel the confusion and frustration and fear of not being sure of the path ahead. The expectation that I had of how nine months or so would be plenty of time to figure out what’s next for me, opening myself up to different ideas. I see how it’s not just a little step, it’s so much more. It has opened up completely new worlds, worlds that I want to explore more deeply. I don’t want to go back to the way my life was before. I want to find a way to earn money sustainably. It’s still feeling very airy fairy. The real unknown is I don’t know I’m putting in enough work to find my voice. Does this make any sense at all? What is this leading me to? What is next? I guess I actually am in my what’s next. The question is how am I going to get to something more stable and secure or is that defeating the whole purpose? Do I need to lean in more to the instability, insecurity and uncomfortableness? Can I do that?
As I look back over my gap year notes, I think about where I was when big ideas and deeper insights were coming up. So often it happens when I’m out in nature. The further in nature, away from cities, lots of people and cars, the better. I seem to philosophize more. I can understand why Thoreau and Walden took themselves to the wilderness, and how John Muir did his musings. You can’t do that kind of introspection in the middle of a busy life, especially with so much technology constantly clamoring for your attention. I get into the wilderness and all those technology distractions fall away. It’s so unimportant. Who cares what’s the latest thing on Netflix? Who cares how many likes somebody got on a social media post or that they touted their latest victory on LinkedIn?
All I care about right now is feeling my body move, soaking in the wondrous beauty around me. Things are simple and complex – a blue sky and emerald green lake, pine trees waving in the wind, budding buckeyes. I wonder if hiking allows me to both do and be at the same time? Because I am doing something, but I am also being a lot more present than usual.
On my hike I passed a few small groups of people heading around the lake, saw a group of women in a speedboat playing loud Christian rock music, celebrating one of their birthdays. A woman with a baby in a backpack and her friend walked past as I was enjoying the view on my return. It brought back memories of doing the same thing. It’s amazing how a baby’s weight seems to double when they fall asleep. I must’ve had a lot more strength than I realized then, the thought of carrying a 20 pound kid in a backpack sounds exhausting now, more than 20 years later. Speaking of mamas and babies I also saw a mama goose and her teenage goslings and a mama duck with several little bitty baby ducklings, they were adorable!
On my way back to my sisters, I stopped and checked out several quilt squares painted on different buildings, I’m really enjoying checking out the quilt trail around here. I also found an old red phone box that had been converted into a huge free little library. I guess it’s not really a ‘little’ library!
I stayed at the house on Thursday to get some job search work and other things done, but did get out for a long walk, saw wildflowers and some sheep.
