Déjà Vu

Well here I go again. Packing the same backpack to walk across a country to Santiago.

When I pulled the backpack out of my closet, I found...all of the toilet paper I needed to get through March of 2020? Interesting. I don't plan on shitting myself EVERY day (*knocks on wood*), so I only kept one.

It's been 10 years since the airport lost this backpack when I landed in Spain to start El Camino de Santiago by myself. In some ways it's déjà vu, but in many ways it's sparked a lot of reflection on how different my life is after these past 10 years.

I'm taking a differnet route this time, El Camino de Portuguese. The Camino is a set of trails over 1,000 years old, trodden by pilgrims from all over the world. The destination is Santiago, Spanish for "James," where allegedly St. James, the apostle of Christ, is buried. In 2013, I walked El Camino Frances, the French route, which starts at the bottom of France and goes across Spain. This time, I will start in Lisbon, Portugal and walk upward towards Santiago.

Last time I started solo, and this time I will again. However, at the halfway point, Porto, Portugal, Katie will join me. Katie and I met in Santo Domingo, Spain back in 2013. We both arrived alone and ended the trip together.

Since then, we've been to Peru and the Mighty Five parks in Utah together. We spent a long weekend together in Mammoth Lakes, California in 2020...but we were stuck inside due to wildfires and Covid...so nothing to write about there.

I promised Katie I'll start the blog for this trip again, but I don't know what I'll talk about for two weeks without the presence of my muse....

"Knowing you, you'll get in some kind of shit that will be funny," she's told me.

Thanks boo.

Who knows. I mean I'm hoping to start this trip without losing my backpack and throwing up in a taxi (those of you who know....know), but...the universe has a way of not giving a fuck about anyone's plans.

I am going into this Camino with a completely differnet life. When I left for Spain at 18, I honestly thought I was dying. To be clear, I didn’t want to, but I thought I was. I'd had uncontrollable, full-body hives for months, that even steroids weren't helping with. They sometimes impacted by ability to breathe because my throat would close up. The only explanation from doctors was intense grief and emotional stress. I didn't know what to do about that, but if it wasn't ever going to get better, I wanted to do the one thing I’d always wanted to do —hike El Camino. To separate myself from the stressors, I didn't make any phone calls back to The States. I just wrote the first blog. It became something I shared with people along the trail, and a way we've all remembered the trip. Since then, it's been a tradition when Katie and I travel together.

I don't remember when the hives stopped during my last Camino, but it was before the halfway point. They flared up briefly upon my return to the states, but have only very rarely flared up for a few days at a time during times of extreme depression and stress. I learned how to cope on the Camino. This time, I'm just tired. Burned out. Over it. I have been sick for two weeks, but nothing chronic and pitiful.

Ages 18-28. My first 10 years as an adult. What a shitshow.

Part of what I like so much about the last 10 years is that I never could have predicted it. If you had told me at 18 that I'd get a Ph.D. and have lived in as many places as I have, I would have thought you were tripping. It's been a lot of wild surprises. The problem is, now I don't want to plan anything. I just like to let shit happen and say "yes" as it comes. I still cannot answer the "where do you want to be in 5 years?" question, and I honestly like that about myself.

But here's the thing...without a goal, I have become addicted to overworking. I already had this instilled in me before 10 years ago, but it is out of control now. Self-help books will tell you to say "no" to things that don't serve you or don't meet your life goals....but I don't have life goals. I have run myself into the ground trying to "win" capitalism, which has just been a hamster wheel that keeps speeding up. As I've earned more (education, money, job status, etc.), global disasters and inflation just keep making life more expensive, so I keep working. Always worried I'm not secure enough, or that something worse is coming. As I've moved up in my career, I have run into more problems and ways the glass ceiling smacks me in the face. I'm doing well and tremendously privileged, don't get me wrong, but I've been so focused on achieving and getting established, that I don't even know what else I want anymore.

I recently read a book that said, "The joy in the process is just as important as the joy in the end that we are striving for.” Since I don't know what I'm striving for, the process seems IMPORTANT. I've been trying not to burn myself out since I graduated a year ago, and...I got better for about two months before I threw myself back on that hamster wheel.

I'm so burned out. In my third year of grad school, I decided I didn't want to attend my Ph.D. graduation. I'd had enough of the pomp and circumstance. I just wanted to go to Bali to regain years of my life in stress. But when I graduated, Bali was still locked down for foreign travel due to Covid-19. Travel with Covid restrictions at that time felt exhausting. Then, the thought of planning traveling to all the sites and booking hotels and shit all sounded exhausting, and then I heard it. The call of another Camino. The only trip I wanted was to put one foot in front of the other...and do nothing else.

"Portugal?" I texted Katie.

"In May," she replied.

People keep saying to me, "So, let me get this straight. You're tired...so you're going to walk 392 miles?"

Yes.

I sit at a desk all day and burn myself out mentall and emotionally. I'm doing a switch. I've always found physical movement very healing. I want to leave the desk and turn off my brain.

Every psycholgist knows that behavior is a function of the person and their environment. Americans like to pretend that last bit doesn't matter. We're a very independent bunch, but the environment influences us whether we want to believe it or not (If you don't think so, try wearing what you'd wear to the beach to your job or church, and let me know how that goes). While I'm not literally sick with grief at this point in my life, I do not want to keep living on my cycle of burnout. I want to change, and I'm not doing it well by myself. It's time to throw the whole environment out.

But to be honest, I'm a little nervous about this one! I'm not 18 anymore! I've had more injuries (the "gimpy" title has never become outdated...), I sit at a desk a lot longer now, and I'm around 40 lbs. heavier. But most of all, I'M BOUGIE NOW. Embarassingly so! Staying in a hostel at 18 wasn't that different from the year I'd spent on a shitty dorm bunk bed in a shared room, sharing a bathroom with three other college students. Hell, that was vacation compared to the bathroom I'd shared with four younger brothers my whole life. But now...I have two bathrooms. To myself. And a skin care routine. And retinol body lotion. And a nice mattress. And knowledge of my food and environmental allergies. And antidepressants. I switched my psychological baggage for physical baggage this trip. I showed up to Spain without even packing sunscreen and now I have UPF clothes to protect my always-inside-white-person skin.

I'm also nervous about being around people all of the time again. I am not the same after quarantine. I moved to California four days before lockdown in 2020. I was completely alone for 15 months. Everyone was lonelier during the pandemic, but I haven't met anyone else yet who was actually completely isolated (I know there were people, we just haven't run into each other because we're all probably avoiding the same places). No friends, no roommates, no co-workers, no family. I don't regret it. I did what I could to keep others safe, but that level of social distancing for that long has left me with something that the vaccine hasn't taken away.

I left quarantine in June 2021 to return to the D.C. area. Here I have friends. I work remotely though, so I still spend large amounts of time alone or in virtual conversation. Working from home helps tremendously with my productivity and accommodating my disability, but I am still struggling with social exhaustion. Having zero space to myself, even at night in these hostels...will be a big, but hopefully needed, change.

I am nervous to leave my comforts and my solitude, but I know that these are also what I use to cope with days of stressful long hours and no play. So I'm trying to be optimistic. Maybe I won't be so drained around others, if my only goal each day is to take a walk.

Because of this, y'all may or may not be getting daily updates. Remember, the hamster wheel has got to go.

But through these 10 years one thing hasn't changed y'all. I'm still definitely in therapy.