Reality.

The other day I flew from Vancouver to Toronto (responsibly, taking COVID precautions).

I left all my packing to the last minute. I left all my house keeping and list of things I wanted to have done before I left to the last minute.

I noticed that many things were not done before I left.

My snowboard gear that I needed to take to storage were on my living room floor.

The laundry rack with clothes that have dried was sprawled in my living room.

The freshly washed dishes drying on the counter.

The duvet on my couch from when a friend stayed over the week before.

A stack of research papers and notes on my standing desk.

My bed not made.

Clothes on my bedroom floor.

All these things just as they are. All these loose ends that I won’t get to before I leave my apartment for a couple weeks.

‘So this is what my life would look like if I disappeared tomorrow.’ All this physical stuff that would tell others a lot about me - how I lived, what I ate, what I was interested in, what I was working on. They’d see the artifacts and make judgements and come to conclusions. They’d take it all as clues. They wouldn’t actually really know who I was and what my experience of life was. What it feels like to live in 2021.

Then they would find my journals, my books of where I wrote down how I was feeling and what my experience of life was in that moment and then they would connect to who I am and my experience of life. They would get a window into my personal struggles and the reality I lived in. They would only then connect to the reality of life in 2021 through my experience.

I was strangely okay with it all.