That was the day

This is a self-indulgent article. 

Many months ago, I escaped from the monotony of both studying and pretending to study, embarking on a long voyage to the Skuleskogen National Park on Sweden's Bothnian coast. It was a solo adventure, made possible by an unusually high tolerance for complicated transport arrangements, and a sense of general lunacy. Despite the 900km round trip's panicked conclusion which may one day warrant its own entry in a Bill Bryson-esque travelogue, it was ultimately a success, a day detached from civilisation.

The initial plan to devote a whole post to the trip was scuppered by deep exhaustion that lingered in subsequent days. My memories of the day now are no longer as precise as I want them to be. I can trace the emotions - ideas of how I thought I felt - but not the details that define what once felt important. The slightly uncomfortable truth is that the more I think about that day out, the more reckless I think I was. But in seeking spontaneous escapism, it also summoned my self-perception to finally catch up to my own behaviour, even if I hadn't realised quite how large this differential had grown.

I used to hyperanalyse my behaviour, attempting to work out not only why I was who I was but what it all meant. My best answers frequently failed my own tests, instead leading me to adopt the privately narcissistic opinion that I was tied up in knots, nuanced and beyond simple characterisation. So relentless is my own criticism that I find it hard not to think of myself then as a self-indulgent bastard - a moron stuck up in his own world who thinks his own self-reflections warrant articles that others would supposedly enjoy reading. By the time I started university, this criticism evolved into a distinct voice in my head supposedly separate from my own thoughts, playing 'bastard' on my behalf, often ready to knock any joy or downtime off its perch whether required or not. Over the last year, that voice has eroded slightly, replaced in part by a psyche that often spirals into a pit of self-loathing when alone at length, yet feels boundlessly enthusiastic and content when in company. I worry sometimes that when alone and without purpose, I am just dancing on an edge in perpetuity, waiting for any reckless abandon to provoke some form of fierce self-criticism. The critical voice above would complain I have just used 200-odd words to describe the growth of an extrovert. I am not sure I can offer a rebuttal.

I planned my crazy trip to supposedly muse over the above paragraph's sentiment and to provide degrees of clarity I crave. A craving to balance self-control and responsibility with a coherent purpose to explain or be able to justify every action and decision. It's the futility that hurts most, a pursuit of non-existent irrationality under a façade of finding reason. Nevertheless, it persists.

A sight never seen is when I'm left alone with memories that I used to think held my life together. They too are tarnished by retrospective reflections, distorted from the reality that held them together, as expressed emotively in Inside Out. Approaching my latest birthday last week, reflecting on the inorganic aging measurement that traps a year's growth into a day, I recaptured a memory almost lost to the "memory dump". Having started secondary school nearly ten years ago, I remembered how 11-year-old me would still return almost weekly to my junior school, by choice but also a convoluted necessity, to talk with the teachers I knew, to connect in the environment I understood. In writing this, I am committing my former juvenile insecurities to a degree of record albeit on an extremely small scale (the critic in my head would not let me get ahead of myself in talking up this blog). 

Reflecting now as I did last week,  realisations dawn. An acknowledgement that the boy who clung to his junior school self now stands detached from the same student studying a thousand miles away in another language, planning trips as reckless as this. An acknowledgement that that boy never would have imagined or desired such adventures through far-flung lands, nor such psychological - if not material - independence. 

Whilst writing that last paragraph, the same self-critic bemoaned my flowery language to (seemingly unnecessarily) personalise the universal experiences of maturity and the discovery of adulthood. Even in writing thus far, I partly fear I have tortured beloved friends and family into reading these words out of a strange personal loyalty, rather than any deeper resonance to such recollections. 21 is not an age of great significance to me, my aging has not jolted ahead so much as continued onward like a Swedish night train, chugging away in the periphery whilst we all attempt to continue on without the fear that living is just the thing we do when we're bored, that life happens whilst other plans are made. 

Yet, my age's societal value has suddenly increased, compelling me to again reflect on where I am in my life, and whether I am content within myself. This article, as a slightly therapeutic part of this self-evaluation, is therefore a partial attempt to recognise the voices that regularly shape my own sense of ego, and an almost congratulatory pat on my own back in recognition of 'how far I've come' in whichever abstract interpretation of the phrase. From this point, the question of whether anyone else cares enough to read this far, can gracefully descend into irrelevance. At least until the narcissist most probably rises again.

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See also:

Digital winners, analogue race Milan-Sanremo

The lonely pinnacle Tour of Flanders

My two most recent essays for Derailleur reviewing two men’s Monuments in 2023.