Hey everyone! For anyone who has enjoyed reading my updates and thoughts, I apologize for the prolonged absence. Before I explain that absence in my typical wandering, tangential way, I'll provide an update about Ulman.
As of this morning, I am just $17 shy of $2,500. I did get an early start on my fundraising, but the fact that we're already almost halfway to the $5,000 goal blows my mind. Thanks to y'all, we're months ahead of schedule and I have no doubt that we'll blow past the minimum $5,000. On October 25th I attended Ulman's 25th annual "Blue Jeans Ball", a fundraising event complete with a silent auction, live music, hors d'oeuvres, and an open bar. Here I met my supervisors in person for the first time as well as some 4K alumni and a few other lovely people. I ate a bunch of tater tots and had an amazing time. The Friday after that I went to my first Baltimore Bike Party, a monthly get together of cyclists who take over the streets of Baltimore. I joined my new friends from the Ball the week before and again had an amazing time. It was an unreal experience seeing thousands of people in their Halloween garb, all high on life (nothing else, surely). I've gotten in touch with local business owners who have offered to help me spread the word and Laurie with Proteus Bicycles thinks she can provide me with some gear! We've even set up one of those Chipotle fundraisers that'll be held in February. I'm having a blast making all these new friends and doing all these cool things and it seems like it'll just keep getting better! I continue to struggle, however, to inspire other students to join me but that's not gonna stop me from nagging them.
Ulman update over. Read on if you're interested in hearing a bit more about my life in general.
For the past month or two I've had a browser open with a partially finished blog about my 12-hour walk experience despite not having worked on it for almost 6 weeks. Very few days went by where I didn't consider finishing the post yet I've never been able to convince myself that it was something I should be spending my time on. There's no denying that I've been busy; my responsibilities within my classes and extracurriculars continue to grow (something I'm very grateful for), but I'd be lying if I said I haven't had any free time. It's intimidating to write about the experience that I think marked a huge change in my life, and so I let all other things take precedence. As time went on, I really put the blog on the back burner because I felt somewhat fraudulent. I gained so much from the 12-hour walk but as each day passes, the lessons learned slip further and further from my consciousness. I've let myself stray from the person I felt I was during the walk and now feel unequipped to share the experience with dignity. It was a truly magical 12 hours but now seems like a distant memory; I feel I simply can't conjure the emotions that deserve to be included if I were to tell the story now. I guess I'll just have to go on another one!
I do want to finish that blog, but I'm genuinely struggling to manage my time as of late. No matter what I'm doing, I'm almost always thinking about what I need to do next or what I could be doing instead. I've fallen victim to the mind and its desire to be comfortable and so I retreat to what is easy and provides quick, false feelings of achievement. I've become re-consumed by the outcome rather than enjoying the wonders of the process. It's strange. I'll have days of pure bliss where I'm effortlessly completing all tasks in front of me only to be body-slammed into complacency and resistance the very next day. Sometimes I'll even start my day beautifully with meditation, exercise, a cold shower, and the completion of schoolwork. Then I'll blink and I'm laying in bed questioning why I even bother going to school. Honestly though, I'm grateful for these frustrating moments. I feel lucky that I have the wherewithal to ask myself tough, uncomfortable questions. At least I'm not just a cog in the machine. But with this awareness comes a heavy responsibility to answer such questions, something I've found to be much, much easier said than done. I won't continue to bore you with the complexities of my brain but to anyone who might be feeling similarly, keep asking the questions, we'll find our answers soon enough.
Ok, all that probably sounded a little dramatic and somber so let me assure you that life is great right now. I'm doing very well in all my classes, I'm meeting new people all the time, and I'm exploring new parts of myself I never thought I'd ever touch. Admittedly, I'm in a bit of rut at this very moment but I feel myself climbing out of it with every word I type. As I alluded to above, I think I've just let myself get a little complacent, losing site of my ambitions and slipping away from healthy habits into unhealthy ones. My ego has been getting the best of me. With this blog, I'm defying my ego who tells me that its not worth my time to write this, and the sirens in my mind trying to lure me away from the laptop and into the soft, warm sheets of my plush queen bed. In this moment I'm remembering that our lives are made up of an infinite number of little moments, each and every one capable of changing our very being. Seemingly tiny, unimportant decisions can be the difference between life or death, between success or failure, between finding purpose or accepting the mundane. I can reflect on many decisions and moments in my life that at the time felt insignificant but today I know were crucial to my growth. As a newcomer to all things spiritual, I find myself pondering what to make of this. I can't help but feel that there is a power greater than myself allowing me to make the decisions necessary to uncover my most authentic self within this human existence.
I apologize if this blog is all over the place, I just get a little excited and lost in my own thoughts when I write but I think its important that I don't shy away from openly sharing like this once in a while. I really can't recommend writing (or typing) your thoughts enough. Be it through my daily journal practice or my less frequent writing of these blogs, I'm able to work through so many problems and come to so many realizations just by getting thoughts, ideas, emotions, questions, etc. out of my brain. It's not quite as great as a conversation with another person, but its the next best thing, and in some ways it's better!
I wrote most of this blog about a week ago but again I was reluctant to share it with the internet. Today I returned with the intention to scrap most of it but ultimately decided to keep most of it and just tinker with it a little. As I just mentioned, I find a lot of value in writing and I want to do more of it... maybe I'll do more over Thanksgiving break. If you read this far, thank you and I hope you enjoyed :)
Happily,
Hayden
