Rediscovering Inspiration
If you’re following along on the ‘gram, you know I took a somewhat ill-advised sabbatical. I limited my contact with the outside world and did the mask and hand-sanitizer thing, and stayed in province, but I did travel.
I am so glad I did, but I am also just barely recovered nearly two weeks later.
There was a lot of travel time in my travel, taxi, ferry and folks’ car.
I am overjoyed I got to see them, ‘got away from it all’, but I’m also counting down the 14 days incubation period and hoping every minute that our cautious measures mean that none of us risked infection or infecting others.
I’m no longer exhausted, and the post-travel emotional hangover of once again being hundreds of kilometers from my closest family members is resolving itself back to the low grade nuisance at the back of my consciousness. Fingers crossed they’ll retire in the next year or two and move closer. The job market is such that me moving closer to their rural environs is not a reality.
I did do some walking during my vacation. I was overjoyed to do quite a bit of walking early in September. I made good use of the long weekend and finished a lengthy trail I’d set my sights on in invigorating increments. However, I didn’t plan to travel later that same month, or get trapped inside with smoky environs hemming us all in from the California wildfires. So travel started after a week of cabin fever, which one might consider lucky if one foot didn’t seem to still be recuperating from the long weekend of marathon hiking, followed by enforced inactivity.
I enjoyed lovely walks in Delta and West Kelowna, and some meandering in Keremeos and the Cariboo Chilcotin, but I definitely didn’t feel like doing much when I arrived back in my apartment on a Saturday evening a week and a half ago, and I’ve been struggling to get out of that mindset ever since.
Yes, I’ll acknowledge the role of hormones in this mess, transitioning straight from PMS to menstrual cramps while fighting melancholy did not help my inclination towards malaise. I’ve yet to figure out if there’s a way to hack my period into allowing me to do what I want without its influence, usually only if there’s enough external pressure - something really good is coming up that makes it hard to damper my enthusiasm. A work in progress.
Thankfully, I can say this month’s latest flow-related aggravation has passed, and whether inspiration came just in time, or I was finally out from under depressive brain chemicals enough to allow myself to find it, i was grateful for that little spark that helped to improve my outlook.
I was, as I so often am in the days where I don’t feel like walking, reading fanfic, and watching old tv episodes on my phone, when the kindred spirit encompassed in the world of Stargate SG-1 finally occurred to me.
The fic mentioned the pairing taking a hike to work out emotional issues, which I can recommend (and should take my own advice with more frequency), but it went that important step further, in having the characters reflect on the fact that walking together was a familiar sensation, since they did it so often on missions, ‘off world’.
Why, oh why, in a series that ran ten years, and has been off the air for ten years, did it take me until now to realize just how much that is true?!
The stargate makes a wormhole that allows travel to other planets, but barring a few flashy exceptions, the teams, such as the eponymous SG-1, WALK through the gate. They travel across the galaxy, but from a certain POV, they do it ON FOOT. Certainly this choice may be the result of keeping the budget down, having actors step through and walk has got to be cheaper than further CG effects for a space ship or maintaining a fleet of military-looking vehicles. But isn’t it a wonderful coincidence?
So many episodes start with the team stepping through the gate, and walking to meet the alien/conflict/curiousity of the week. It’s a pivotal part of the series formula. Well, at least, it is for me, now.
It makes for one mother of a metaphor. To explore, all you need to do, is take that first step.
I won’t be closing my eyes and imaging alien worlds when I stick my foot out my door, and it certainly helped that I was able to sleep consistently enough for the time and energy to get a couple good walks in yesterday, but it’s amazing how often it escapes me, in order for walking to remain a routine, I need not only to have the consistent physical capability: not injured, fueled up, not tired, hopefully stretched, and properly outfitted; I also need the mental fortitude, the motivation, to make that step.
Every walk can be a discovery of wonders, if I’m in the right mindset.
1. Never stop looking for inspiration, you never know where you’ll find it.
2. Sometimes a break is exactly what you need, to allow yourself to be reinvigorated by the simple joy of walking.
