:: stop by stop ::
8:22 PM
Osaka: A picture I took while waiting for the train to the airport. One of my favorite images from Japan.
I spend most of my idle minutes in the day drifting off into my head for just a bit. I picture things; leaves during autumn, city streets that I can't identify, new shades of dark lipstick staring back at me in the mirror, papers scattered on desks, coffee mug stains on tabletops.
At the start of the day, I always have such a clear picture of what I want my end destination to be - the kind of person I'll be when I'm there, the kind of people that I'll surround myself with, the kind of reputation I'll have for myself.
I've also realised, that I never end a day with the same picture. It becomes harder to remember the outlines of what I saw in the morning. It becomes harder to imagine how I was so sure of the destination 10 hours before this when now I'm doubting if I should even think of buying a ticket just yet.
A day teaches you a lot of things. No matter how routine your days are, no day is ever the same. It's impossible to repeat a single second of your life. Something will always be a little different.
A single day is like a long train ride. It's the same train that you take each day. The same long carriage, the same worn out tracks. At each stop, no matter how many times you look out the windows when it slows down, you don't ever see the same thing. Every face passing through the door; a face that is unfamiliar each day, a face that you'll never see again. The way the sun shines, the way the light cracks through when the doors open, they don't look exactly like how they looked the day before.
Each day is filled with new questions and new answers. All while engaging with different people. People that make you feel good about yourself and those that do the opposite. You have conversations that relate to you, conversations that don't, conversations that you wish did and conversations that you wish didn't. You say things that sounded right at the time, but end up regretting after. You stay silent thinking it was the right move at the time, but you end up regretting after. You pick up new things along the way. You pick up on how much you stutter when you talk for the first time to strangers, or how you laugh too loud when you're at restaurants. You learn that you wish you knew more things about the world around you so that you can sound a little smarter.
Each day is filled with new mistakes and new realizations. They come flooding back during drives home when the highway is pretty empty and the streetlights look pretty smeared against the dark clouds in the night sky. Music is humming softly through the radio, but the sounds and words are inaudible, overpowered by your head. You realize that you found something else you lack today, you realize because you saw it in somebody else. You realize that you should have gone through the day with a happier heart, maybe that would have turned a mediocre day into a good one. You remember that you forgot something on your to-do list, and you realize that you're not as responsible a 19-year-old as you should be.
Each day is filled with different feelings. Different weights of joy and distress. Some days you feel more - like all your nerves are standing on edge and waiting to feed off sensations. Some days you're numb, relatively immune to everything because you think to yourself "Hey, I've been through worse." Some days you think about the past more often than you think of the future. You miss people that you told yourself not to miss. You think of people that you told yourself not to think about. You feel more hopeful in the evening than you did in the morning and it puts a smile on your face. Some days it works quite the opposite.
And when the busy week comes to a close, and you find yourself staying up late in your room with one dim light on, ushering in the weekend - you gather everything together. You close your eyes and feel the weight of the silence around you, the only sound being the voices in your head as the week floods by. I find a great importance in this process. It's like writing a journal, but this time, you're feeling what you write without needing to pen it down.
It's necessary to go over everything you've gathered - the good and bad conversations, the good and bad realizations, the mistakes, the feelings. You build them up into the image of a person and you think to yourself "Is that person, me?" "Is that person who I want to be?"
The answers differ each time, and they might end up making you more confused than you started off. But that's the process, right? It's about not focusing on the end point all the time and enjoying the stops in between. Making the journey the destination.
Each day is filled with new questions and new answers. All while engaging with different people. People that make you feel good about yourself and those that do the opposite. You have conversations that relate to you, conversations that don't, conversations that you wish did and conversations that you wish didn't. You say things that sounded right at the time, but end up regretting after. You stay silent thinking it was the right move at the time, but you end up regretting after. You pick up new things along the way. You pick up on how much you stutter when you talk for the first time to strangers, or how you laugh too loud when you're at restaurants. You learn that you wish you knew more things about the world around you so that you can sound a little smarter.
Each day is filled with new mistakes and new realizations. They come flooding back during drives home when the highway is pretty empty and the streetlights look pretty smeared against the dark clouds in the night sky. Music is humming softly through the radio, but the sounds and words are inaudible, overpowered by your head. You realize that you found something else you lack today, you realize because you saw it in somebody else. You realize that you should have gone through the day with a happier heart, maybe that would have turned a mediocre day into a good one. You remember that you forgot something on your to-do list, and you realize that you're not as responsible a 19-year-old as you should be.
Each day is filled with different feelings. Different weights of joy and distress. Some days you feel more - like all your nerves are standing on edge and waiting to feed off sensations. Some days you're numb, relatively immune to everything because you think to yourself "Hey, I've been through worse." Some days you think about the past more often than you think of the future. You miss people that you told yourself not to miss. You think of people that you told yourself not to think about. You feel more hopeful in the evening than you did in the morning and it puts a smile on your face. Some days it works quite the opposite.
And when the busy week comes to a close, and you find yourself staying up late in your room with one dim light on, ushering in the weekend - you gather everything together. You close your eyes and feel the weight of the silence around you, the only sound being the voices in your head as the week floods by. I find a great importance in this process. It's like writing a journal, but this time, you're feeling what you write without needing to pen it down.
It's necessary to go over everything you've gathered - the good and bad conversations, the good and bad realizations, the mistakes, the feelings. You build them up into the image of a person and you think to yourself "Is that person, me?" "Is that person who I want to be?"
The answers differ each time, and they might end up making you more confused than you started off. But that's the process, right? It's about not focusing on the end point all the time and enjoying the stops in between. Making the journey the destination.
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