I am learning.

I am learning to listen to opinions that I do not entirely share. I was bad at it before. I felt so intensely emotional when politics came up in conversation, or online or on the news that I had to switch off. It made me bubble up inside with anger and despair and I didn't have room for it. If someone had a different opinion I didn't want to know. It felt irrational, and I never quite understood it, but I didn't have time to question or challenge it.

Now I do have time, and I am learning not only to listen but to love. I am learning tolerance and acceptance. I am learning the flaws and problems on my own side of the argument. I am learning to question and challenge not just what others think but what I think. I am learning that love is far greater, far more important than what someone casually thinks about the means of achieving equality.

I am learning that my opinions are valid but not static. I am learning that it is okay to feel intensely and okay to need to switch off but that it is never okay to shut down. I am learning that listening and talking and compassion and empathy wherever possible is the way forward and if that cannot be achieved something is going wrong.

I am learning and I am loving and it is good.

Holiday blues.

Coming home from a holiday is always a funny experience. You've spent however long it was suspended from reality in some beautiful place distinct from your own home and then, suddenly, you have to launch back into the swing of things. It's even weirder when the holiday bridges the gap between one chapter of your life to another. In this case I went to Italy still vaguely clinging onto my status as a student and I've come back as someone who is... unemployed.

I feel nostalgic and displaced. This isn't like every summer before where there was something starting in the autumn, so every free day was a precious paradise away from responsibility. This is... well I don't know what it is.

Of course, it is exciting. The world is brimming with possibility and opportunity and the unknown pathways of my life start from here. But before I went on holiday the possibilities and choices were far enough way they still seemed attainable and now, back to reality, it all seems a bit out of reach.

There was also so much going on before. So many big milestones and adventures and challenges. And now what? I'm still trying to process it all. That's why I haven't written for a while. Couldn't get my head around it. I still don't think I have yet. So I guess it will just have to be a summer of working things out.