Why am I here? What is it that I am seeking? I knew a moment ago, but I have forgotten ~ The Last Unicorn
The week at either end is the strangest, always. The last week of contract and the last week at home. In both circumstances you suddenly feel like you don’t belong any place, like you’re steadfastly being drawn away from one life into another. Preparing yourself, shutting yourself off, setting yourself off.
And yet you’re more active in that week, you do more at the same time you do less. You throw yourself into projects, and packing and last minute shopping. There are what feels like dozens of appointments you should have done earlier and now have to miraculously cram into the next four days. You make crazy decisions and then spend whole days doing nothing except staring mindlessly at a movie you’ve seen a million times before. You, in some ways, forget who you are, and what you’re supposed to be doing, at the same time that you know precisely where you’re going.
You try and take the you that you are, and fit yourself into the mold of the work-you, and while it’s the same person, it’s also not the same person, and you have that almost instant panic of “wait, do I still know how to do this? What if I don’t still know how to do this?”
How do I reconcile the windblown hippie-girl who was zipping down the interstate with Carrie Underwood blaring on the radio mere weeks ago, or the child-woman who’s been hiding in her cave for the last month while she rebuilt herself from the crossroads up (and still totally hasn’t finished that rebuilding, but is getting there)….with the woman who’s going to be standing in a business suit in front of dozens of people who expect them to somehow teach them something?
The world between worlds. Or as CS Lewis put it, the wood between worlds – “things don’t happen there, the trees just keep growing that’s all”
It’s a strange place to be, in that metaphorical wood.
Anyone who has job that travels will understand I suppose.
It’s not a bad place to be – far from it – just…strange.