2021-01-16: cold, grey days

and just to say this is the hardest part of the year: after christmas, after the new year, when everything's packed away but the landscape, that landscape which is, where i live, snow-packed, dirty, and stays that way for more months still;

where everything's covered in grit, whether that's blown-about garbage, sand from the road crews, or just the bitter months of cold;

and where it has been years from my last vacation, my last real vacation, when i left behind the daily sameness to swim in ice-cold atlantic waters and watch jellyfish float dangerously past. days like this i feel it; days like this the sameness drags over me, slow as sandpaper, my skin increasingly tight, my mind uncharacteristically craving novelty over stability.

the last time i was overseas was in 2016 (europe); the last time i was outside the country was in 2016 (chicago); six and a half years later, the days take on a weight greater than their fraction of the year. i need to be somewhere else. i need to be anywhere else.

every day, the possibilities come to me: dublin; new orleans; ljubljana.

i don't know if it's ennui. if it's the pandemic. if it's the part of my life that's been successfully planned rebelling against what it sees ahead. but the cold's been bad lately, the sky solid weeks of grey, and i need something to take me metaphorically and physically away from here.

journal