Fitting In--and not
Last week I spent a few days working in DC for my 'day job.' While I like Washington, I find travel, especially business travel, to be difficult. It seems that when I'm in between places, and when I get out of my daily life, that I start to examine/assess/evaluate how things (like my life) are going, which isn't good for my state of mind.
Waiting at Logan Airport for my flight to take off, I naturally looked around at the people (mostly men) who were sitting around, waiting for the US Air shuttle. Businessmen, some of them young, and most of them looking sharp in their corporate drag, tapped on their Palm Pilots, or Blackberrys. Suddenly I felt under dressed. After all, I was going to meet a contact at one of DC's museums, and I should look my professional than I did in my comfortable but frayed black jeans.
A few hours later, after checking in at the museum, I had a free afternoon in the nation's capital. And yet I found myself restless, lonely, disconnected. It's often when I travel that I feel the absence of having a significant other, a partner. It's then that I realize--or feel more deeply--the knowledge that there is no one back home missing me, no one waiting for my call.
And so I fell into a funk, the funk of not fitting in. As I walked around DC, everyone seemed to be on a mission, to know where they were going, and why. I walked aimlessly,
anxious to get back to Boston, not because someone was waiting, but because the loneliness I feel here--at times--is eased by the comfort of the familiar, the salve of the routine.
Waiting at Logan Airport for my flight to take off, I naturally looked around at the people (mostly men) who were sitting around, waiting for the US Air shuttle. Businessmen, some of them young, and most of them looking sharp in their corporate drag, tapped on their Palm Pilots, or Blackberrys. Suddenly I felt under dressed. After all, I was going to meet a contact at one of DC's museums, and I should look my professional than I did in my comfortable but frayed black jeans.
A few hours later, after checking in at the museum, I had a free afternoon in the nation's capital. And yet I found myself restless, lonely, disconnected. It's often when I travel that I feel the absence of having a significant other, a partner. It's then that I realize--or feel more deeply--the knowledge that there is no one back home missing me, no one waiting for my call.
And so I fell into a funk, the funk of not fitting in. As I walked around DC, everyone seemed to be on a mission, to know where they were going, and why. I walked aimlessly,
anxious to get back to Boston, not because someone was waiting, but because the loneliness I feel here--at times--is eased by the comfort of the familiar, the salve of the routine.
posted by Judah1 at 10:50 AM
1 Comments:
Judah, I know that feeling of loneliness. Travel can be inspiring, and then again not. It can be a lot like meditation, when you realize that all you really have is yourself, and your thoughts. What an awful thing to face sometimes! Attitude, of course, can change everything. And if you can force yourself to feel like you're on an adventure, then you can feel all sorts of empowered and "Onely." I love onely. But it's true also that onely is hard to feel when you slap an "l" in front of it, and I think there's not much worse than loneliness. I hope you are finding comfort back in your fabulous familiar.
(Your former neighbor from Apt 33)
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