Written by Elise Mullen, Photos by Elise Mullen
About a year ago I made the decision to move back home for what I anticipated would be a quick two week “reset,” before heading back to Savannah to continue school and presumably normal life. Those two weeks slowly turned into three, then a month, then five, and now over a year — but I don’t need to tell you that, we all remember 2020 well and good.
This past year for me has been very isolated, a balance of personal choice of protection and safety, while also being stuck in my small hometown in southern Maine that is 18 hours away from the hustle and bustle of the place I have called home for the past four years, Savannah. And while isolation can be incredibly overwhelming and something that, as a senior, I never thought I would have to plan for, the beauty in the stillness of my life has been something that I have unexpectedly grown to appreciate.
The first question anybody asks me these days is what is my plan for after college, job-wise they mean. And while this is enough to drive any undecided senior into a full panic, it is the follow up question that I always enjoy answering. They follow up with, “How are you doing?” and they really mean it.
In March of 2020, when the scariness and uncertainty of the world was almost overruled by blissful ignorance of what most thought would be a two-week pause on life, my family started taking daily walks. It was really the only thing there was to do. Around my house is a three-mile loop, that we must have added at least half a mile onto each time in order to cross the street distancing ourselves from others we passed.
Even the most boring loop around my neighborhood and surrounding back roads quickly turned into my favorite part of every day because it was a time to disconnect from the noise of what was going on in the world and a good excuse to get outside of the four walls of my bedroom.
These daily walks have become less consistent since last March, yet somehow even in a virtual world there are still days where my workload is too much and there is almost no time for a break. Plus, walking outside in Maine in the middle of winter is not my first choice for an activity. Despite that, prioritizing time to move around and take a break from outside noise is easily the best thing I have done for my mental health all year.
There is something really special about being outside immersing yourself into nature. Whether you are listening to music, a podcast, talking with friends or walking by yourself, I have done them all. Taking your mind off of daily distractions is something I had never prioritized or given myself time for before. And in a cinematic way, being in the middle of the woods, or near an open ocean has forced me to compare myself to my surroundings and realize that sometimes our everyday problems that consume us are not as big as we think they are.
If there was one piece of unqualified advice I could give it would be to give yourself ten minutes, to go outside and walk around, explore a new area or go back to an old favorite. Just give yourself time to disconnect and take a breath. Our lives have been completely flipped upside down. Everything has changed and yet as students and young adults, we are expected to continue on with our “normal” life when there is nothing normal about the past year. And yet, there is still purity and calmness within the small moments that surround us, if we allow ourselves to open up to them.
