The Transition Artist

Every day it seems the world spins a little bit faster. Each month, each year, it seems to pick up the pace, running at a speed that the best training plan couldn’t prepare you for.  

It can be dizzying at times, looking up from my phone or computer and suddenly realizing it’s November and, when asked the date, hesitating between 2020 and 2022, as if 2021 has happened so quickly I’m not sure if it’s just starting or already over.

Each moment feels like a grain of sand I’m planning to pick up and watching slip through my fingers at once. 

The summer vacation road trip across four countries I spent so much time planning in the weeks leading up to it flew by at breakneck speed. Two months have already gone by since then. But I hold tight to the collection of memories it made, and already find myself mixing them with other potent souvenirs of summer vacations past. I see these precious moments in flashes, like objects in the rearview mirror that are closer than they appear but just far enough away to be out of reach. I hope they’re not harder to keep just because they came and went so quickly. 

• 

I wonder if it’s because I’m so busy. I work long hours, train for marathons, study for my French driving test, go out with friends and MC concerts. Could it be my packed schedule that makes time slip away faster than usual? Could it be the distraction and allure of social media, eating time that I might’ve previously spent idle and thinking? Or could it be my newfound need to make plans with incredible amounts of detail that makes the world spin faster? 

I’ve become the type of person who creates lots of to-do lists. I make note of the best restaurants, bulleted lists of sites to see, administrative things I need to remember to do later, and create rough sketches of daily agendas; things I couldn’t fathom before. I’ve always been the type-B person that gapes with an open mouth at the excel-spreadsheet level of detail of type-A planners. And suddenly I find myself imitating them. My fear of forgetting or missing something I could’ve planned for has become stronger than my desire to improvise.

I found a journal of mine the other day from my first year of college. I read the words of a younger version of myself musing about what it might be like one day to look at myself in the mirror as an adult and giggle at the person looking back at me, because she and I would both know the person behind that face is still a child, and will always be a child. 

I look at that person often. As I read her words, I let out a laugh so sharp it was more of a gasp because I realized that the last time I saw her in the mirror, she wasn’t giggling at the face of the adult looking back at her. She was so fully absorbed in the fine lines starting to settle into potentially permanent shapes on her forehead that she had forgot to laugh about it. She wondered instead which moisturizer she needed and picked up her phone to google it.

Maybe it’s a question of life phases. At 18, I was a little philosopher, spending almost equal amounts of time musing on meaning and living, or, rather, hurling myself into any and all new experiences. It was so evident that I would always be a child when I still was one. 

Today, I’m a planner and a doer; I find myself spending more time analyzing – thinking about consequences, next steps, and outcomes – instead of diving in headfirst without a plan and considering what it all means later. The wildest things I do involve calculated risk; running a fast race after spending months training, climbing a mountain on a planned route, giving rehearsed speeches in front of a crowd, dancing on stage with just enough alcohol in my bloodstream to give me liquid courage but not have me flailing like a fool. 

I still have fun, but it’s not quite the same. Sometimes, I really miss the carefree, younger version of myself that dove into everything – places, new relationships, jobs – headlong. 

If I’m a planner now, I suppose it means I must’ve learned something. Maybe I spent enough time getting burned by half-baked situations that the residual trauma taught me to stick my neck out only once I’d spent some time with my rational brain. 

It takes me longer to make decisions. I give my empathy more carefully. I’m a little more suspicious than I once was.

Fundamentally, the person I see in the mirror is the same one. I still feel like singing and dancing when I’m happy and, sometimes, I still muse on what it all means. I love last minute plans. I still crave deep emotional connections and the kinds of experiences that give you a pang of nostalgia before they’re even over because you realize that you’re experiencing a peak moment. 

I just wish they wouldn’t go so quickly. I wish life came with a pause button – so that those phases of planning before jumping would seem shorter, and the peak moments would feel endless. 

I crave hours-long 10pm sunsets. I want the orange leaves to stay on their branches for at least two months. I want the warm moment in front of the fire to stick to my insides all day. And I wish the snow didn’t melt so fast. 

I haven’t figured out how to slow down time or stop planning just yet. My best attempt is to look up more often. To sit quietly a little longer. To be very aware of the joy and the nostalgia of the peak moments before they end.

If, by chance, I find the pause button, I’ll send you the remote.