Saturday morning thoughts

or all i can muster at the moment

My dog trainer tells me to start putting on “soft, calming” music for my dog throughout the day to relax. So I put on a generic classical playlist on Spotify called Calming Classical. As he sleeps beside me, his chest slowly rising up and down, I hear the roar of the wind outside, knocking my drying rack back and forth against the glass panel of my terrace.

It’s Saturday and I’m listening to a soft piano, a violin - Carnival of the Animals. As I stare at a to-do list filled with random and somewhat menial tasks, I disassociate and imagine that I am at a live viewing of this performance, completely moved. Maybe next to someone I love. Maybe thinking about someone I love. Now, I’m imagining a ballerina dancing across a stage – her lithe, long figure moving about effortlessly. We’re at a ballet now, no, maybe an opera? I am longing for someone I think, feeling nostalgic, tears well up in my eyes, I clasp a familiar hand next to mine…

Music has always been able to make me feel very deeply and facilitated my storytelling. They call this maladaptive daydreaming, and I think it is something every writer has. Without writing - without somewhere to put it - we’d all be a little mad, I think. Imagining entire scenarios, characters, conversations. Sometimes even catching ourselves speaking out loud in the car or on a long walk. I imagine actors feel this way too, carrying characters and different personas within them.

I look at my dog, resting peacefully beside me. The music has done its job. I pat his chest with a hollow thud, and remind him he has nowhere to be. I close my notebook and remind myself that I don’t either - not really. It’s Saturday and my to-do list is rather arbitrary. I decide to just be completely present. To let the music wash over me, to let any thoughts that arise pass on by, to just simply enjoy my coffee, with the bitter and tangy notes of earth and coconut.

How easy it is to be “doing nothing” but instead reaching for a phone, a dopamine hit, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. And how odd it feels to just sit here and actually do nothing but listen, observe, stare into my coffee and sit with my thoughts. Though I know this feeling is closer to what we’re meant to be doing as a species. Not starting wars, not doing taxes, not distracting ourselves with random shit, just sitting and thinking about the sensations of being alive.

I look at my socks - white and a little dirty at the bottom, some dog hair stuck to them like my feet are a mop. I flex my feet, feeling my shins stretch all the way to my toes: delightful. I notice the color of my skin, olive, and how it’s dry in some places and soft in others and how my veins are blue-green and how interesting it is that I live in Portugal now and how I don’t congratulate myself for my wins as much as I should because I actually achieve so much.

Then I think about how each person is really here to do a specific thing and I think about my thing, which is telling stories on screen with complex characters and how come I’m not doing that? How come I turned an escapist hobby (travel) into a career and post on Linkedin and know what SEO means instead of doing what comes so naturally to me even at the age of 7 years old and has never left my body. A true, natural passion and talent to tell stories. Why am I so scared of something I know I was meant to do, that I think is my purpose? That other people are doing right now!!

But travel has changed everything in my life, it has changed my perspective of the world and of people. It will always show up in my life and my stories and characters - everything shaped by travel because I have been so shaped by travel. I used to think it was sexy and intriguing when people would talk to me about their travels back when I hadn’t yet left the country and now it feels like a requirement and the mark of a fully formed character for me. Yes, travel is a privilege and not all are so lucky to be shaped by it, but there is something to be said about a person who prioritizes adventure and experience and uses their last dime to volunteer with the elephants in Thailand or go on a silent meditation retreat in Nepal. Who lives in a way that is simply – to just enjoy living and life and the world around them. Perpetual students, if you will.

I can not think of a more interesting person than that.

And of course, I want to be interesting too, but I think I fell into travel as a way to step outside of myself and just to observe (and enjoy) different ways of living. We are multifaceted beings. I can be anyone I want to be when I travel. I meet different versions of myself everywhere I go, with every new person I encounter along the way.

There’s also the argument that if you want to tell interesting stories, you have to live an interesting life - and I’ve taken that rather seriously. But how much experience and data do I need before I think I’m ready to write the things I really want to? I already have several scripts started, several stories worth telling and birthing into the world, but yet, I’m caught in a cycle of doing something adjacent to my purpose because it pays me (though I still believe it’s all a part of the process - isn’t everything?).

These are all thoughts I have while looking at my ankles. Nocturne No. 2 in E-flat Major is playing now. I get that all too familiar yet all too fleeting feeling of: I need to write this down. I grab my laptop.

I begin…

My dog trainer tells me to start putting on “soft, calming” music for my dog throughout the day to relax.