A Series of Unexpected Events

Lemme grab my tiny violin

It’s Tuesday morning, and I’m sitting in a spacious, airy cafe in Brooklyn called Devoción. The Colombian coffee smells amazing. The chocolate pastry lasted three big chomps.

The night before, I did my version of hot girl summer: eating a pack of spicy salami in bed while reading a paperback copy of Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy.

Somehow, after flying across The Pond with a few days’ notice, I felt calm for the first time in months.

That was not the state I was in four days earlier.

On an otherwise enviably uneventful Thursday evening, I received a message on Slack: “We’ve got a strategy meeting next week. Can you fly in for it?”

The answer, of course, was yes. But in my head, I was doing a lot of math.

My friends and I had a road trip planned for the following Friday. I had only landed in the UK the week before. My clothes were still in packing cubes and my skincare still lived on the floor.

I was internally screaming crying throwing up.

After a series of nonstop life chaos, I had really been looking forward to slowing down. I had found a local gym with machines I recognized and others with funny names like “BootyBuilder.” I had taken inventory of the limited Asian food options in the nearby Sainsbury’s and learned that silken tofu on this side of the world is a pantry item, not a fridge item. I had even bought a coffee subscription that sends me two bags of beans from different UK roasters so I could recreate my morning pourover routine.

These were small things. But together, the puzzle pieces had begun to resemble a life I could settle into.

Before I could enjoy it, I had to leave again.

Over the next 72 hours, I dissociated from my body and went through the motions.

Book flights. Wonder why I was important enough to fly in. Book hotels. Worry my colleagues wouldn’t like me. Pack, although this mostly involved rearranging clothes in my packing cubes. Question whether I’d contribute anything useful to the strategy discussion.

Then came the self-flagellation.

Boohoo, I have to fly to New York. Let me grab my tiny violin. Oh wait, it’s in storage because I decided to upend my life ten days ago. No big deal. And I have to go to London to catch my flight. What a bummer to get an all-expenses-paid trip to two of the greatest cities in the world.

I didn’t know how to rant about the New York trip because it wasn’t one to rant about.

It took me back to my first job, when I was a budding reporter flying to Singapore every two months to interview bankers much more senior than me. It was an extraordinary opportunity. It was also a privilege I grew tired of.

Now I had a new privilege I was tired of.

Gratitude did not negate the exhaustion. It made me sink deeper into a self-flagellation spiral.

*

Before settling into the airport hotel, I met some old friends in London. They were really into Hellenistic astrology (don’t ask me what that means) and called the last 18 months my “karmic homework.”

They said I had been tested to see whether, among all the currents of the world, I could prove to the Universe that I had learned something from the previous 29 years.

I seemed to have passed because I chose myself again and again and again. I thought the test was over.

Maybe I had misunderstood the assignment.

I’m not a very adventurous person. I love routines. I crave monotony. I seek refuge in a predictable timetable. Over the previous week, I had been trying to construct enough routine to make my new life feel stable.

Then the Universe messed with my body clock again and put me on a flight to New York.

And yet, once I arrived, there was very little I could do. I could work, eat, walk around, read, and sleep. Being in a different place and time zone cleared my calendar because I was physically unable to keep doing everything I had been trying to do.

Travel had plopped me into a temporary bubble. A calendar detox.

For a few hours on Monday night, there was only spicy salami, a memoir about a really problematic mother, and a freshly made hotel bed. I woke up on Tuesday feeling automatic, supersonic, hypnotic, funky fresh.

Let’s see how long this one lasts 😅

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Update log:

• 📖 Reading Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy (page 119/372). It’s suuuuuch a great read so far!

• 🍪 Received a cookie in the mail to welcome me to the UK! I can’t wait to chomp on that when I get back.

• 😮‍💨 Kept my anxiety at bay (or just about) after my first full-time week at my new job. I’m hoping this week goes better.

• 🧴 While I’m unpacking, I’m inventorying all the skincare I have, including their expiry dates. Hopefully this makes it easier to stock up (although Claude roasted me for having 7 sunscreens).

• 🍣 Had handrolls last night and they were amazing. Nothing beats warm rice and cold, raw fish 🤤

• 🧳 My partner lent me her Away carry on and now I have to go fire my 12yo Samsonite. The wheels of the Away luggages are so dang smooth?!

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