Bishop, CA.

Day 8: Saturday 27th October

It’s 4pm, and I’ve been sat in the Looney Bean for the past three hours watching traffic and time go by, as well as doing a bit of work, catching up on my finances and downloading Spotify playlists galore which have kindly been shared with me over the past twelve hours.

No, Looney Bean is not a typo, it’s a cafe on Main Street, Bishop.  It’s a contemporary set up, which is a little out of kilter around here: the rest of this curious little town feels like it’s a collection of buildings that have haphazardly risen from commercial progress of modern America between the 50s and 80s.

Yesterday was a very long day.  I left Yosemite around 8.30am and eventually got to bed at 1.30am. During that time, I experienced the full spectrum of emotion, ranging from wonder and awe, to despair and terror and everything in between.  In spite of the despair and terror, the overall conclusion as my head hit the pillows was that it had been a red letter day, and vehicular challenges notwithstanding, I was glad, grateful and content.  Everything I had experienced and everyone I had encountered along the way had slipped into my life for a reason.

Needless to say, this morning, I was exhausted.  Having slept in relative luxury in a small hotel called Cielo at the north of Main Street, Bishop, I awoke feeling disorientated with a looming sense of fear. It may have been partially attributed to a hangover, but the full impact of the trip and yesterday’s experiences hit me like a ton of bricks and my all too familiar old friend, Anxiety, appeared to have crept into my head and cuddled up whilst I was sleeping.

Anxiety comes and goes in waves these days, and I’ve come to understand it well enough to know that I just need to ride it out and ignore it instead of trying to analyse or suppress it.  It will always pass.  In any case, it has kind of dictated a gentle, slow day of reflection.  As unsettling as Anxiety feels, giving myself the time and space to breathe and just be has been welcomed, and I believe also incredibly valuable.

Until today, I have been go, go, go – scheduled up to my eyeballs, hungry to see and do everything.  With Oliver still in the car hospital and by default having the option taken away from me keep on rolling, I’ve had no option but to drift with the day and indulge myself by wrapping my head up in a restorative cloak of goodness.

The finer details of yesterday’s car incident(s) will be more enjoyable to write and read when I’ve got the fun hat back on; nobody wants Anxious Annie recounting what has the opportunity to be the defining anecdote of my next twelve months, least of all me.

Surrender.

In the meantime, whilst I’m feeling all wistful, it feels like a good time to talk about how my aspirations for this trip, along with my mindset, have changed in light of the breakdown and crash yesterday.

All of a sudden, my clearly defined, asphalt path diverted.

Fastidious planning went out of the window.  Sights and hikes I had been planning to see and do were no longer an option.  As a solo traveller and therefore very much on my own, I was absolutely still responsible for trying to get out of the situation I found myself in, but fast realised that here – thousands of miles away from home – I was wholly reliant on the good will and actions of other people; also, that their will and actions didn’t necessarily perfectly slot in with my own set of timescales and expectations.

In short, I was not in control.

So, I stopped trying to be.

The last time this happened to me was in India in March when I was in a taxi which by western standards would have been classified as a death trap on wheels and a well-paired driver.  We were speeding around mountain bends like Billy Whizz and for a while, I thought I was going to die.  I couldn’t get out and walk, nor could I summon a replacement Uber to collect me with the click of a button. More frustratingly, I couldn’t even complain as there was a significant language barrier.

Then, the thought hit me that there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. And as soon as I surrendered to this fact, my whole India experience changed for the better.  I let things happen around me and to me and gave up the need to control, and with that, I opened myself up to possibility and adventure.

I recently saw a piece of work by Es Devlin, “The Order of Time”, which I thought was absolutely beautiful and resonated with something I’ve put a lot of thought into.  In our hectic worlds of work, life, family and friends, we’re constantly putting pressure on ourselves to honour commitments and “fit everything in”.  Everything becomes about time: filling time, scheduling time, needing more time, wasting time.  By focussing on time itself, we lose sight the fact that time is just a measure, and chopping up life into portions of time isn’t living – it’s just ‘functioning’.

With all of this comes in the principle of control as well.  Self-enforced structuring of each and every day, and continually committing to doing things because we think it will please others just ends up as a cycle of wasted energy, and also means that we’re passing up the privilege we have to experience the many beautiful things that are ready and willing to come into our lives if we make the space for them.

My schedule is now wide open.

I have surrendered once again.