From stagnation to exploration
I’ve been a homeless vagrant since July 2015. It’s definitely a decision that gives me the opportunity to explore without being held down by a dependence to one specific location.
“The traveler sees what he sees. The tourist sees what he has come to see.”
― G.K. Chesterton
Since I hit the road, I’ve lived on three different continents, learned two new languages semi-fluently, obsessively tracked my expenses in a notebook, got nicknamed Branca de Neve (“Snow White”) by my capoeira family, baked bread daily for up to 300 people for three months, stayed with a woman who beat her toddler because it was culturally normative and spent three weeks learning more about Agile in education. It was also on the road that I spontaneously applied first for the scholarship, then for the program with Praxis.
This list is, quite honestly, an iota of what I’ve actually accomplished and seen in the last 15 months. It shows how my world opened up to one of possibility and opportunity like I never experienced in Switzerland.
“But that’s the glory of foreign travel, as far as I am concerned. I don’t want to know what people are talking about. I can’t think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything. Suddenly you are five years old again. You can’t read anything, you have only the most rudimentary sense of how things work, you can’t even reliably cross a street without endangering your life. Your whole existence becomes a series of interesting guesses.”
― Bill Bryson, Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe
Over the 18 years I grew up in Switzerland, I limited my focus to school. My circle of friends was growing smaller, my interests in anything, including my studies, diminished. I was growing more and more isolated. The worst experience I had was a bad bout of depression in December of 2013, where I spent six consecutive days without setting foot out of my studio. Life was going on for everyone around me, and I felt like I was running in place, perpetually stagnant. I finally made the decision to drop out of my Master’s degree to travel. That decision has helped open my world again. I saw that hadn’t even been evolving.
In fact, an opportunity such as Praxis is honestly something I’d never have considered were I still studying anthropology. I’ve barely started the three-month bootcamp, and I already feel like I’ve accomplished more for myself than I ever did in school.
My first Praxis challenge was to create my own website. Thanks to this, I also got asked to design my mother’s website and work on marketing for her business as a real-estate broker in Geneva.
Since I’m temporarily living in Geneva, I’ve decided to challenge myself with rituals and accomplishments at a very small scale. Each day, I want to read a chapter of a new book and let go of technology for a few hours. I also intend to learn a few new pieces on the piano, and produce content for my website.
None of these challenges are new, but I’ve never taken ownership of success or failure in getting them done. Choosing to do so consciously today is something that both frightens and excites me in what it means for how “time” is experienced. Because I am a vagabond, it seems to hold a different meaning to me.
“Le temps se faufile et défile à la vitesse de nos villes
Être le plus haut dans son building pour croire qu’on est le moins débile
Laisser une trace indélébile de son passage chez les humains
Il doit en rester un sur dix mille qui envisage un autre destin”[Time passes and goes at the speed of our cities
To be the highest in the building thinking we aren’t the stupidest
To leave an indelible trace of our life with the humans
There must be one in ten thousand who consider another destiny]-Tryö, Le Temps
Working with a timeline and deadlines is a beautiful challenge and a huge struggle. It’s amazing to say, but I got my Bachelor’s degree without ever respecting a deadline on a paper, including my graduation history thesis. It was a frustrating experience for both my professors and for me. And yet, I know that I can. I’ve been hired on several separate occasions for stressful deadlines in different projects, some for which I was translating pages and pages from English to French.
My latest project was a translation of Laurence Rosenthal’s lecture on Bach and the Cosmos, an 1 and 1/2 hour-long talk with beautiful musical intervals. From transcription to translation to subtitle formatting, the responsibility was all mine, with about 3 days to submit the finished product.
Working with Praxis is a nudge towards a healthier approach to overall productivity. I am facing similar challenges to those I had when still in school, but I made the conscious decision to do this for myself. I applied to Praxis, went through the loops of the different interviews, the e-mail exchanges and sometimes uncomfortable questions I found myself both asking and answering.
The difference with college is that where there used to be reproach, red marker all over my work and negative criticism, Praxis is uplifting and supportive. At the tip of my fingers I have access to a community of brilliant people of all ages who want to help each other grow into a better version of themselves.
I am convinced that in the end it will benefit me by challenging old habits that I need to outgrow, but haven’t yet. Excuses don’t work here because I am taking ownership of my successes as well as my failures. I am proving to myself above and beyond all else that “I CAN do this”. The most powerful lesson I’m learning as a new Praxian is about worth. It can be found and expressed in so many more ways than I’ve ever even imagined. I’m excited to see and experience what comes next.
