Dawn

mornings past future winter

№: 18

67.2021

I turn the faucet all the way to the right for the last few seconds of my shower – a ritual I have taken up this past winter. The practice reminds me of high school when I didn't have the luxury of steamy personal bathrooms but rather run-down swaths of stalls – some of which didn't work entirely. Toward the end of my junior year, we were lucky to have one or two of the stalls installed with running hot water – but even with the option to take a hot shower in the morning, I at times preferred the chilling water to awaken myself to a new day.

Of all the past winters I've experienced, this past winter was also a time when I was trying to figure out my career, my faith, writing, family, friends and more. Most of that is still work in progress – I'm writing again – which I'm happy about. The opportunity intern at Antra, a consulting company, has been a process of learning. I recently also became a daily coffee drinker which I didn't ever see coming. I still convince a part of myself that it's not an addiction.

At the beginning of this very past winter, the was a kind of longing that hung in the air as I moved back to New York. This longing was for the certain past – the good and the bad as well as the future – always a time to look forward to and hope. This longing was at times deep and frustrating and at other times faded amidst the daily rhythms and rituals. Past victories and failures are both in themselves alluring. The former because I can easily hold them too close and close my eyes to what lays before me, now. The latter because I can also easily jump back right into them and stimy any progress I made to learn from my mistakes. However, the most attractive thing about the past is that the past has a certainty to it – it's complete and bound up in itself. How I badly wanted that – the certainty that the past could offer.

The future holds hope as an appeal. Often at times I tend to want to feed into that hope now – by doing what I can to make the future become the present. At times I don't want to wait – why wait for something so deeply attractive as a future. The risk here is, I think far more dangerous because I may then become frustrated and dissatisfied with the work I need to do to get there. The work needed to get there remains very much so in the present. I am writing all this as a reminder to myself that the living part is very much in the now.

As a side note, I've also been trying new recipes. Although I have tried different recipes, my beef stew isn't quite there yet as last weekend I skipped the tomatoes and added too much water but managed to salvage a meal for my room mates.

That's it for now, but I hope to share more in the future.

Thank you for reading.