The snow makes a little tapping sound as it falls on the roof of the trailer, smothering the solar panels. It’s an icy snow. Not the slow drifting flakes that fall, gentle and silent.
The RV park resembles a paint-by-numbers piece – all that’s missing is a spotted deer. The bare tree branches boast a thick white frosting of snow, the bark a light brown with black simplistic shaded lines.
There’s still evidence of prints made by Elvis and I earlier. He tapped on the door to go out as the water for my coffee boiled. I put on boots, and stepped outside. The sun was still an hour away, and snow muffled everything. Shrouding us in stillness.
Yesterday the snow was all but gone. Towering piles of its dirty remnants – where it had been shoveled tirelessly over and over to clear roadways and parking lots – now trickled into gutters. Flowed into the icy canal as the sun teased the landscape with a promise of warmth.
I stared intently at the brown stubble of bristly looking lawns – they look exactly like those sandy-colored buzz cut doormats – and caught sight of a few green blades. Barely distinguishable, yet there. A twiggy branch that had been broken from the limb of a tree during recent windy weather showed signs of spring too, with tiny tightly clenched buds.
Today though, it’s all hidden again. Blanketed in white.
This weather kind of reflects how I’ve been feeling. I don’t feel particularly inspired or productive. I’m getting my basic work done, yet the things I’ve been planning on doing still remain untouched.
Does this matter? Should it matter?
It’s important to give ourselves a moment to just be, right? To sit patiently, let things develop beneath the soil. Not feel pressure to always be in pursuit of achieving something colossal or productivity-hack to… what exactly?
Truth be told, stillness – to the depths and capacity I know exists – frightens me. I worry if I slip in and just be, I won’t be able to get back out. I’m afraid of becoming lazy, or perhaps worse, perceived as lazy. Our society is so tightly wound, marching from one conquest to the next. Too busy, too tired, too worked up or burned out to be still. Not now, we tell ourselves. Someday.
Trying to untangle my identity from all the ways commonly used to measure ourselves and others is a journey. Moving from a house into a 14-foot cargo trailer conversion was the easy part. The identity fueled assumptions and beliefs are what’s proving more challenging. Some are harder to decipher; harder to sever, harder to see.
Why should I feel bad to just be… content? Simply observe, not drop any hastily whipped together advice or interpretation. Not have logged x-acceptable amount of work hours this week. Who cares, right? Today, tomorrow, whenever.
I’ve managed to untangle many of the tethers. I’ve got rid of so much shit, and cleared the white picket fence with inches to spare.
However, what good is any ounce of freedom if I keep berating and accusing myself of not being enough – especially when I don’t know what or whom I’m supposed to measure up to, and why.
Perhaps that’s what’s so appealing about being here, surrounded by nature. The vast amount of empty space is undeveloped. It hasn’t been subjected to the pain of not being good enough as it is. It hasn’t been forced into becoming something it’s not.
To me, that’s something to aspire to.
TRAVEL & ADVENTURE 