Field Trip is a homebase for the research and references that inform the work and life of designer Lauren Scarlett.
[RESEARCH ©FT]
This year, I learned how easy it is to lose the things you've worked hard for—how it can feel as though someone hit rewind on your life, and all the progress you made unravels before you. The job, the apartment, and the sense of freedom you longed for, are suddenly packed up in a van, driving back to the childhood bedroom you first had all your dreams in.
There's a phrase my mother likes to say which is: “Start as you mean to go on.” I had the flu on New Year's Day.
This is not a whimsical story about everything going wrong for me, for it all to go right at the last minute. Life and I fought a lot this year and I’m crawling to the end. At times I’ve given into it; I’ve laid down and wallowed in self-pity and blamed everything but myself for not getting anything done. I’ve spent the early hours of the morning questioning if it’s karma for my teenage sins, or if it’s what I deserve for never being satisfied. But little does life know (or maybe it’s starting to realise) tough love works on me. Stubborn to my core, I will always get back up.
In one my favourite posts of the year, I wrote about being a teenager and said, “I was bored of life as it was presented to me, so I ran straight at it.” As obnoxious as it is to quote myself, it’s a line that lingers in my mind. I’m often bored of life and I let it know. I dare it to give me something to work with, and this year it did, just not in the way I had originally hoped.
Everything going to shit gave me something to write about, and this is where all the little energy I had went. I've heard people talk about writing as if it's a calm respite for them, something of a warming embrace after a tough day. It isn't like that for me. Every time I felt beaten up by life's happenings, writing was there to welcome me with a hard pat on the back. And despite it striking a bruise every time, it was the kind of pain you take on the chin, because something about it feels good. To write is to feel it twice. To feel it over and over again until you’ve confronted all that’s uncomfortable. To feel it until you’ve turned it into a few pretty lines, and with some luck those words roll off the tongue of others, and maybe linger in their minds for a while.
Choosing to recount the emotional events of your life through language is an interesting choice to make, but one that gives back. There are no barriers between the different versions of yourself when you decide to confront them; a fluency must occur to understand how you feel and succinctly put words to it. I move through life with a sense of knowing that I didn’t have before; I’m comfortable being the person who isn’t afraid to say it all.
So it was a fight, but along with writing, the year did include some sweet moments I’m grateful for. The people I encountered both in real life and online have been a little light. I’m thankful for all the words of others that have inspired me, supported me and comforted me. For the sake of your entertainment (and the future memoir) I’ll continue to flirt with life and we’ll dance with our demands of one another. I may forget to run at it sometimes, but life knows it’s mine. I will try and try again.
friend trip is one of those “like before reading” publications
This hit me beautifully.