The Transition
Life is different now. It’s not better, it’s not worse, it’s just different. Things here in Chapel Hill are comfortable. My neighborhood is quiet, my bed is soft, and my friends still have the same numbers. My cat still can’t hear and my car still makes noises it shouldn’t. Nothing changed, and yet everything has.
The things that took months to adjust to when I first moved to Colombia are now strange to live without. The farmers riding past my window early every morning sitting on a cart pulled by a donkey and yelling avocado have been replaced by deer tiptoeing through my wooded backyard. The faint sound of the neighborhood watchman’s whistle as he patrolled the streets with his old dog every night has been replaced by ESPN highlights I already saw twice that day. Not better or worse, just different.
I hope I don’t get any more used to packing up and leaving things behind as I already am. I have done it three times now in my adult life. I seem to get so wrapped up in the things I am doing at the moment I rarely miss something to the point it gets me sad. Writing can be dangerous because it makes that impossible, which is why I have avoided doing this until now.
Having said that, I am cherishing the time I am spending with my family right now. My mom, dad, brother and I are going to the gym, playing tennis, and going out to dinner together multiple times a week. I think our relationship is rare and extraordinary. I’m sure I will look back at this transitional phase of my life with a smile.
“Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul, on which they mightily fasten… making the soul of him who is rightly educated graceful.” –Plato
My plan is to go back to graduate school and build off my experience of making music for educational purposes. I’m sitting here at a coffee shop across from my old elementary school with a stack of GRE vocabulary flash cards realizing… it’s okay that I didn’t master Spanish in the last year; I still got a lot of English to learn!
I moved to another country, to a city where I knew no one, and built a life that was as rewarding as it was fun. Then, as fast as everything seemed to happen, I was gone. I hope my friends know that I will never lose contact with them, and I will come back to visit as often as I can. To all my musician friends, know that I didn’t bug you about making music all the time for personal gain. Pictures capture memories, songs do much more. A chapter written, a new chapter to write… characters that will live on forever.
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