Grounding versus grinding.

I think part of it is how rooted I’ve become in routine. While this imparts much-needed structure, it’s also stifling. One of the beauties of travel is the way it forces us out of our routines. When you take up residence somewhere, and go about the business of actually living there, routine inevitably sets in, which is as it should be, probably; but routines should be mindful and frequently questioned.

It was with this in mind that I decided to revisit Bouldin Creek Café for a veggie chorizo taco and a soy Mexican mocha. Friday has become chore day, and catch-up day, and work-on-all-the-projects-that-gainful-employment-precludes-or-allows-minimal-time-for day. Clearly this is a lot for any given Friday to live up to, and I feel like I’ve become so entrenched in trying to realize various goals that I’m not doing a great job of making time or room for spontaneously experiencing and enjoying my new city, for participating in its cultural life, or for just, well, for lack of a better word, being.

So I lingered over coffee and a taco, and wandered up and down First Street, including stopovers here and here. And then I made my way back to my neck of the woods, and took my place in the slow, grinding, congested procession of cars and shopping carts and bodies navigating around other bodies in the name of doing the responsible thing and stocking up on provisions for the week. The eventual return to routine is unavoidable. Or is it? And is the evasion thereof advisable or even desirable? Trying to strike a balance between the grounding aspects of routine and the grinding ones.

In the thrall of the sort of melancholy that typically strikes on Sunday afternoon, the sense of living on borrowed time, and wondering what kind of life I’m living, what I’m doing here, or what I’d be doing anywhere else, for that matter. That’s the thing about allowing yourself to just be—it has a way of putting you in touch with where you’re at. And maybe that’s part of the temptation of routine: to bury the thornier aspects of that. It seems important to take stock of this sort of thing, even if it’s difficult. It also seems important to recognize that these moods, just like happier moods, are episodic and fleeting, and never the whole picture in themselves.

I’m at an interesting stage of this journey: the part where the brand-newness of a situation gives way to reality and invites one to meet the challenge, or flee. Or perhaps meet the challenge by fleeing. Again the wanderlust—powerful and insistent—creeps in.

It’s another beautiful, slightly cool, spring-like day in Austin. Departing from my routine and wandering around First Street gave me ample opportunity to reflect on what drew me to this place, why I moved here. It also gave me ample opportunity to reflect on the fact that wherever I am—Austin or elsewhere—I still have a lot to figure out.