As the end of my senior year is now upon me, school is the last thing I want to do and this past week I was desperately craving a break. One sore throat and a positive Covid test later, I guess one could say that I got my break. An interesting way of looking at 6 days of isolation, but it is what I need to get through it. I have always viewed isolation as a symbol of thriving as it provides me with the time and energy to finally delve into my many hobbies and hours of introspection, but when it is actually upon me it can get a little lost. I won't lie, there was some secret joy when finding out I could miss school in one of my last weeks, but that came to an end when my first day of quarantine resulted in binge-watching a whole season of a tv show and scrolling endlessly on social media. Day one drained me so much from doing absolutely nothing that I had to make a change.
Yesterday I woke up and immediately went outside to read while drinking my coffee. This "high-vibe routine" gave me flashbacks to May 2019 when I first started doing this in my mornings and that whole summer was filled with learning about the beauty of the world around me and trying to unlearn all of the hate I had been conditioned to inhibit within myself. 2019 was the most special year of my life as it was the first wave of my spiritual awakening journey and every year around this time I seem to go through another wave, so I guess this is my official welcome into wave three of bettering myself. I finally have time to slow down and think about the world, my life, and where everything fits together. I am calling this post "The Slow Down Tour" and I pledge to spend the next few months slowing down to appreciate my life, plus I got the clever title from a Peter McPoland concert I just recently attended which he has titled "The Slow Down Tour." So many aspects of my life have been screaming the mantra "slow down" at me and the irony of that as I am forced physically to slow down has got to be symbolic. Next month I have something planned almost every day it feels like with three concerts, two vacations, and somehow still squeezing in work to fund all of this, so I better slow down while I can. I still have yet to comprehend that I am going off to college in August, so again, I better slow down because I am not ready to leave my family, my best friend, and all my secret spots hidden within my small town behind. In order to be ready for this change, I am going to be expressing as much gratitude for the life I have now.
To make the most out of this time to slow down, I have been going on hikes every day to pass the time and it just so happens that it is also giving me an insane mindset shift. I am not sure if it is just the endorphins, spending time in nature, or listening to spiritual/mindful podcasts like I used almost every single day, but all I know is that I feel amazing. More introspection and gained insight have forced me to surrender to quite a bit of shadow work coming to terms with some harsh realities, but it is helping me embrace who I am really meant to be in this world. I won't get too into it in this journal, but I will briefly overview what has been recently occupying my mind. The process of "dismantling the ego" has not been able to leave my mind and can even be used as a definition of a spiritual awakening. So much of our time is spent pleasing other people instead of living for ourselves, and that is the ego in play. I am trying to focus less on the negatives that society indoctrinates within us and if I can help other people see that even a little bit then I will be happy with my contributions. It is a full moon as I am writing this which is insane because I did not plan for my life to come so full circle. I did not even remember this until now, but back on the new moon, I set the intention to slow down just a little bit more and get back in touch with my hobbies. I guess there really is divine timing when you allow it because here I am reading, writing, hiking, meditating, doing yoga, practicing tarot, and just being overall mindful.
This post is a little scattered as I really did not plan on writing it at all, but I guess the message I have been trying to get across is to just slow down. Thank you, as always, for reading.
-Emma Claire