Sometimes you are at the start of a journey. You’re packed, you have enough snacks to see you through a couple days (or hours…let’s be real, I eat a lot), your mind is ready for whatever will come. There is a fluttery feeling in your stomach and your lips start to draw up at the sides. You’re sitting at the start of a journey and suddenly - you freeze. Can’t move. You feel a little panic as the words “What the fuck am I doing?” slowly leave your mouth.
The only thing you can do at that point is take a breath and pick a course. Most people view life as a linear event. You go from point A to point B to C and on and on and on, from birth to death. The truth is no course in life is linear. Sometimes you start at point A, jump to point K, loop back around to C, realize that you forgot something at B, and continue forward.
Sometimes the things you picked up years ago as a hobby are what you are supposed to do in the present, only you are too self conscious or pig headed to realize it. You think you are only meant to do this Thing because you are good at it and you think its where your path lies. Teachers, peers, family all believe in you and want you to succeed, so you keep on doing this Thing because everyone seems so goddamn excited about it. You keep banging your head into walls and stumbling into things in the quest for perfection until one day you decide to let your guard down. You remember those other things you liked to do when you were younger and, feeling frustrated with your current art, you add them in just because you needed the release. Something clicks and a light ignites to guide your path where there was only darkness before.
Walking the Camino, I learned that sometimes the answers don’t present themselves in clear ways. You need to really pay attention to them. Take what’s coming next for example: I’m moving away from modeling, into photography, and trying to go back to writing at the same time. I’m debating graduate school, trying to find where I can call home, while simultaneous trying to keep my head afloat. The universe conspires to help those seeking out their personal legends. If I was meant to do modeling and photography, I honestly think more opportunities would present themselves. I would sell more prints and galleries would come knocking (well, they still may, I am young after all). I’ve learned that my best response comes from the blending of visual and written works. Telling stories. Telling them honestly.
Sometimes the journey you think you start out with is not the one you are truly meant to be on. Sometimes it’s a stepping stone to get to the next place. Sometimes its just a brief period of happiness before you truly test yourself.
And every once in a while, you decide that the Journey itself is enough, that it is the Masterpiece you have been searching for. So you take a step and steer a course, trusting that things will work out the way they are supposed to.