Change is good because sometimes you need a penny when your coffee comes to $2.01 and you don’t want to get .99¢ back. It’s also good to change your underwear and it’s totally okay to change your mind. Also, it can be confusing if you don’t change the calendar, so that’s good, too. And you can’t forget about that song, ‘Changes’ by David Bowie, that song is pretty sick. The season’s also change and if nature’s doing it, you know it’s good! Changing your perspective is interesting, too. Like, standing right here can be a lot different than over there. Change is happening all the time which might be the only aspect of change that doesn’t change.
I don’t think there’s anything that excites me more than new scenery. How beautiful it is to experience a place for the first time; the excitement of drinking in the sights, the unique colors and shapes never before processed by the brain, fresh impressions of a memory.
I was lucky enough to have new experiences in new places everyday for about 6 months last year on my bicycle trip. Sure, a lot of the corn fields in Illinois looked a lot like the corn fields in Indiana and Ohio but, they were still different. It’s a true blessing to have a stretch of time vary so greatly from day to day. I think this long stretch of time on the road helped me break out of the mindset of ‘same shit, different day.’
Maybe two years ago, I truly felt like a goldfish swimming in a very small bowl; I was training endlessly for my cross-country journey. Walking and riding in small circles around the towns I grew up in. The scenery became numbing and everything about being home was exhausting. I felt like I shot myself out of a cannon when I finally left on my bike with my bags packed.
A year ago I was right in the middle of my journey. I finished the cross-country portion and was about to head South for another few months down the West coast. I have to make fun of myself because Ia big part of this trip was to escape the monotonous pattern of everyday life at home but, I essentially traded that in for another monotonous routine on the road. Instead of waking up and going to work all day everyday I was waking up and riding my bicycle all day everyday. No matter what us humans do our lives have a way of falling into a groove but, that doesn’t mean we have to feel trapped.
Last weekend my boyfriend and I were driving home from Provincetown. The day had ended and night had already fallen before we started the two and a half hour ride home. At a certain point I remembered the first time we went to Ptown together at the start of our relationship. We had also driven home in the dark through a landscape that was new to me in a situation that was new to me. It was wonderful to realize and acknowledge these two similar scenarios and think about how much has changed in the six months that separate these two points in my life: how much we’ve grown individually as well as closer together, the home that we share, we’ve travelled, together and separately, dealt with changes in our families and changes in our careers. Anyone can pause for a moment, think back 6 months and add up all the things that have happened and are different now even though so many people feel their lives fall in the ‘same shit, different day’ category. We have more control than we allow ourselves to believe. I never knew how I could make art my full-time job but, I’ve learned (and I’m still learning) how to change the way I understand what that means and how to approach it.
Humans are very good at creating a model of reality in our minds that we then limit and imprison ourselves within but, change is something we’re all capable of initiating. Nobody is making us live the same way day in and day out. The things we want to accomplish may seem impossible or too much for us to handle, it’s important to keep in mind nothing happens all at once, small changes add up. So maybe start with something small and change your underwear.
