If you know, you know that I’m in New York for only 36 hours. Chris and I took a red eye in and will be taking a red eye to Barcelona in about 4 hours. I’m tripping out, I haven’t left the country in 5 or 6 years. Flying over the ocean? What? The past week has been a true whirlwind of working, prepping and feeling like time is not giving as much as I am giving it.
The last time I was in New York was exactly a year ago with Chris while he shot a music video. We were here for 10 days, but I didn’t see anyone because I didn’t want to get Covid and give it to Chris who could then pass it to an entire set of people. It was a funny thing, essentially self-isolating in a hotel room with a city view, crazy electric blue carpets and tons of mirrors. Despite the bouts of loneliness, it was a surprisingly inspiring time—actually when the concept and name for this newsletter was born.
This time the New York experience has been little more than a puddle splash. I didn’t even bring my blundstone boots to navigate the slushy streets because I didn’t want to take up room in my luggage. We’ll be in Barcelona for 2 weeks and I needed to focus my mental, emotional and suitcase space on that. As I write this I am deeply sleep deprived, I didn’t get much REM in the nights leading up to our NY flight because I was full of nerves.
Nerves are not new to me. They’re different from the classic anxiety—I’ve experienced that too and it is much more severe. Nerves make me feel like a little kid. I used to get deeply nervous every single day on my way to school in elementary school. My stomach would be in knots, my mouth dry. To counter this, my Dad would put John Mayer’s breakout album Room For Squares on for the duration of the drive. We’d eventually get to my favorite song No Such Thing. I’d sing at full volume, reaching for catharsis in our grey 1986 Buick LeSabre.
"Welcome to the real world", she said to me
Condescendingly
Take a seat
Take your life
Plot it out in black and white
Well I never lived the dreams of the prom kings
And the drama queens
I'd like to think the best of me
Is still hiding
Up my sleeve
They love to tell you
Stay inside the lines
But something's better
On the other side
I want to run through the halls of my high school
I want to scream at the
Top of my lungs
I just found out there's no such thing as the real world
Just a lie you've got to rise above
Okay I’m literally tearing up in the lobby lounge of the hotel while rereading the lyrics. It’s too much!
This song used to be absolutely aspirational for me. I would hope hope hope that I could feel as free as this song was. 9 year old me was too young to understand what the “real world” was, but it was the false set of expectations I was attempting to fulfill. I was only doomed because I was blindly trying for an illusion.
Life is really a choose-your-own-adventure game, but for years I played it as if there was one set of rules and one way to win the prize.
The funniest thing is how nervous I still get. It gets worse when I’m tired, but then I get so tired from being nervous that I remember nothing matters one bit. Of course some things do matter during this temporary life experience, so I have to get back on the horse and straddle the line between caring too much and not at all.
My Dad would snap me out of this cycle by helping me reframe the feeling I was experiencing. I’ve heard him say to me countless times: not nervous, excited.
And you know, sometimes that really does work. Am I allowing the emotion to run me? Can I look at the feeling and recognize that the nerves are a manifestation of energy? The energy is there—revved and ready—it just needs a bit of direction.
My mind is accustomed to funneling that energy towards nerves. If I don’t pay attention it can run me ragged, even take me to a place of anxiety. Rather than simply waving away an emotion, I always do my best to first acknowledge it. If there’s a good reason for the emotion, shutting it down will just bring it back in a new and more powerful form! But ultimately this Barcelona trip isn’t anything to be nervous about. It’s a good thing that should be handled as such.
If Younger Me could see me now, she wouldn’t want me to be nervous.
Younger Me couldn’t fathom what the future had in store. Younger Me might think this was all so cool she might even be nervous to meet Present Me.
If I can’t enjoy this time, I could let most every experience become joyless.
So today, I’m not nervous. I’m excited.
Thanks for listening to Sleep Deprived Me ramble on. If you have time, listen to No Such Thing all the way through and belt the ending.
xx
James
Wishing you THEE loveliest time!
"Life is really a choose-your-own-adventure game, but for years I played it as if there was one set of rules and one way to win the prize." THIS!!! Once I realized this, so much of my life has been filled with joy because I get to choose; not because 'I'm supposed to do this'