Adventure is good for the soul. I can vouch for this. My soul feels saited, my camera full and my mind finally focused.
In other words, I ran away to London over the weekend. Not for the first time either. Once during my undergraduate degree, I ended up on an overnight bus to London with less that four hours notice and several of my best friends. It was one of the best decisions I have ever made and this was just as fufilling.
I have a habit, neither bad nor good, because it leads to a soild serving of both in the end. I get ideas in my head. Ideas I just can’t shake. These ideas perculate and simmer until I have the entire prospect mentally planned and I just have to know if I can do it. London was one such idea. I can’t really explain it. It started as an opportunity to see one of my favourite poets perform live. It was happening the next day and I was a country over, but I wanted to make it happen.
Oddly enough though, in the space of a few hours the tickets had sold out, and I just didn’t mind. It should have bothered me more than it did, but I just wanted to go on an adventure. I wanted to take my boyfriend and do something carefree and spontaneous, and just deal with the concequences when they came. You have no idea how rare that is for me. Sometimes it’s just impossible to switch my brain off. I’m a realist. Every idea and thought is analysed for practical and likely outcomes, which are nine times out of ten negative. So to just not care, it’s so cathartic. To find that rare get-up-and-go that so often is just absent, it was just luxurious. The excitement. To go. To see. To share it. I needed it, so much.
Now, however, I need to get back to work. But it’s still there, in the background. That get-up-and-go. I’m motivated again, even in the smallest way, but it’s there. I found it again.
I’m reminded of a poem that Tia used to love. (Tia is my grandmother, but she’d whack you upside the head for calling her that and making her young soul feel so old). I just remember the one line, about this old woman reading obituaries just to double check she wasn’t in it.
“My get-up-and-go had got up and went”
Hopefully that’s a while down the line for me yet. Motivation is fleeting for me lately, but I know there are many adventures in my future, whether for a day or a life-time. So for now, I’m biding my time, working away during the lull between adventures. After all, that lull is life, and I want to enjoy every moment.
P.S. Keep an eye out for updates to my Photography from the Streets of London album. My new photos will be getting added as soon as I get the opportunity to edit them.
Tea Stains and Notes in Margins 