Monday, October 8, 2012

Always learning

I’ve been fortunate enough to travel a lot over the years, and I always try to enjoy those moments to their fullest. I tried to do that this summer, but I think I fell short. Instead of reveling in the amazing opportunity of just riding my bike all day, there were times that I treated a day as a checkpoint, counting down the miles to get back West.

Lately, I’ve been asking myself if the things I raced back for were worth it. Landing an amazing job was great, but there’s a certain monotony that comes with the 8-5 working world. Navigating office politics and learning to embrace the cubicle life pales in comparison to the feeling of achievement of climbing a mountain pass. And it’s so easy to romanticize happy reunions with people you miss the most during your travels. But when you come back and all the geographical miles have dissolved away, the emotional and physical distance becomes clearer. For better or worse, sometimes the people you return to aren’t what you’d expected or hoped for.

I know that I enjoyed my summer riding across the country, but a part of me feels like I didn’t experience the trip with absolute abandon and that “no regrets” attitude so common in my adolescent peers. I think that to a certain extent, I was focused on the things that lied ahead- socially, my working career, etc.- and I wasn’t able to live as “in the moment” as I would have liked. I hope that I have learned my lesson and can begin to be more appreciative of the present, focusing instead of on what “is” and not what “may be”.