Third-Person to First- Then Back Again

When you live your life carving out a certain path and when, more potently, you make a concerted effort to maintain that carved lifestyle, you grow accustomed to a certain set of questions, comments… conversations.

You smile on your end.  And you give the answer that your audience wants- after a while, after all, it is entirely to easy to read most people: what they are looking for in a response, what will make them feel good.  You can anticipate both the question and the answer in demand.  So color me surprised today when a coworker asked not 'why' or 'what for' when he remembered that I am leaving in about a week to move to Norway.  Not 'why' or 'what for' but 'you running to something or away from something?'

Are you running to something or away from something?

Am I running to something or away from something?

How prescient of this man who hardly knows me; who hardly knows that there really has never been a 'to' or 'from' for me.  It is just running.

I am just running.

Because it is what I do, how I roll- I run.  I have made a life out of running- out of burning, moving on, moving around, making a mockery of traditional life-paths.  And yes, this is all absolutely something I have written about before- on more than one occasion.  But it is, once again, and for obvious reasons, on my mind.

Hello Nomadism (Nomadisme [lame] in Norwegian)- it's nice to be acquainted again… and facing the running realities again.  The go-go-go until you can't go anymore and then you sleep before waking to run again.

When you live your life in a certain style, you accept that certain- no fundamental- human or social experiences will be absent from your own individual, personal experience (even as much as you accept all the questions, comments and conversations).  Maybe you even resign yourself to this fact- it's your life that you're living, your experiences that you're cataloging, your own world that you are shaping: what is or is not included in those things… well that's on you, right?

Right?

You are your own alienator.  You are the one who pulls people in or pushes them aside.  You are the one who retreats, recedes.  You (I) are (am) the one who makes (made) a life for your(my)self in which you (I) are (am) infinitely forgettable, replaceable, running.

And Until Next Time, Dearests...