I have always been in a hurry. I hated traffic. I wanted to be home sooner. Skip the traffic. Drive fast. Reach home just that bit earlier; Traffic sucks, of course… rotting away, stalling on the humid road behind a truck that only moves an inch every five minutes sucks. So it’s rational of me to want to leave earlier. To skip some of those evening strolls, the trips to have snacks, the lingering goodbyes… just to go home and do nothing.

There is something so paradoxical about not belonging both outside and inside. You’d think it was easier - “Let me rush home and clear my laundry, write notes, watch that movie, play that game, code, hit the gym, do this, do that” and I’d go home and… rot. It’s funny. When I’m at home, I’d fantasise about doing stuff in college. And when I’m at college, I’d just wanna be home sooner. Either ways, I’m just staying afloat in a paradoxical mind that I can’t quite let belong to at one spot. It reminds me of how I feel about train journeys as a kid: As I’d see trains come and go on the station, I would want nothing more than to get into one. But when I’m actually travelling inside a train, I could only think about getting down at my station.

The human brain really is a goal-striving machine: point it to something and all its attention and effort goes into finding a way to achieve that end point. This could be best observed in an actual traffic: different vehicles, all in their own path - each of them with a human brain that directs them where to turn, where to stop, where to overtake. Or let’s say a human traffic for example: A road crossing has different human beings walk across and away from each other. Each on their own destination. Most don’t even realise what their body is doing. They’re just… walking, while their brain is performing high computation judging multiple things at once: the vehicles around them, the empty gap that they could walk, all the noise from their surroundings (despite their optional headphones), the exact centrifugal spot to release one leg and extend the other, while mentally calculating the number of steps to take to reach the other end of the road, stumbling across the imperfect rocks, judging their size and matching it’s movement so the legs don’t fall into any of the obstacles. All this to just cross a road. The brain still constantly works up to find the optimal path (from past experiences, these optimal paths not only include the shortest, but the most pleasant, common, or if the brain is feeling lucky, experimental or exploratory) to reach their destination. It’s all fascinating really.

So that’s why when I’m in college I fantasise about the things I would do when I reach home (or how early I should reach home to do it - which means I have to rush faster, skip the traffic, or whatever it takes!) or when I’m at home I think about what I could do in college (talk to people, talk to this teacher, attend class, go to the library, etc). The stupid brain is just constantly setting it’s goals and rushing towards it’s intended “destination”.

I get so exhausted from going home that I stop doing what I intended (or wanted) to do and just lie on my bed scrolling my phone or killing time staring at the ceiling. It’s almost as if my brain is addicted to anticipation rather that presence. It’s easier for my brain to fog up every unintended experience or uncomfortable social scenarios with “I could have reached home by now!” or “I would have been doing [X] at my home rn!” or “I wish I was at home rn”. But from multiple patterns, I know I wouldn’t be doing shit when I’m at home.

I’m just reaching out to the psychological relief that “Once I get there, I’ll begin” so I end up not starting anything.

This is not only on a day-to-day basis. This affects long term thinking as well. I remember at the end of school I was thinking “Once I would reach college, I’d make the most of it”, and now it’s “Once I graduate, I’d do [RANDOM SHIT] with all the free time I get”, and “once I get a job, I’d do [X]”.

Now I’m sure as fuck from all my past experiences that I won’t do shit and I’d still be running away from it all, finding the next plausible destination where my life could finally start. But it won’t. I know it won’t.

So maybe next time, I’d just move a bit slower. Look around, smell the flowers, and enjoy being in traffic. Next time, I’d drive a bit slower, stay a bit longer, and let the moment linger for a second more. I don’t know what would happen once I graduate, but the time that I have left (very less, btw) I would spend it much more sparingly and pay a little more attention.

Maybe.