I admit there are days when everything seems to go wrong. What do you do? Well, my way of letting off steam is to go for a walk. The advantage of living in a city so small it feels like a valley is that you don’t have to walk very far to find a place to enjoy yourself, and the only thing I have to worry about is bringing something to listen to music as I go. Where to? Sometimes that’s the last thing on my mind, and maybe I don’t set a specific destination. I just want to walk and figure out what I want to do as I go.
There are days that tend to be quite overwhelming—the kind where a sense of heaviness seems to weigh on me from within, and the exhaustion is more mental than physical. On those days, I walk home, even if it takes me a little longer. But I’m in no rush; instead, I use the time to clear my mind a bit and get my thoughts in order. If I need to make an important decision or prepare for something in advance, the walk serves as that relaxing session that brings me so much peace of mind. It’s easy for me to shut out everything around me if that’s what I really want, but the opposite can also happen—where I practically don’t want to think at all and just observe what’s along my path.
Every Friday I get the chance to go play volleyball with my friends after work, and most of the time I end up playing until very late at night. I prefer to walk home, though, so I can take the opportunity to gradually wind down while reflecting on how my day went. To my friends, this is totally strange, but to me it’s very normal—and to tell the truth, what would be strange for me would be to take the bus home, something I practically never do unless I have to carry heavy luggage. There are very few Fridays when I don’t manage to do what I’ve mentioned, and even then, my body seems to complain about the absence of something that’s already become a habit.
The scenery on my way from home to work can vary quite a bit. At first, there are only empty streets because it’s so early, and then I see lots of people passing by on their way to work or taking their kids to school. In just a few blocks, everything changes, and now the noise and traffic pick up the pace a bit more. For my part, I always try to leave early so I don’t have to rush and can take things easy from the very start of the day. Sometimes the day dawns quite cloudy with very pleasant weather—the kind that might make others wonder whether or not to leave the house.
My hometown (La Victoria, Aragua State, Venezuela) is a tiny little place where walking to any destination is always the best option. I can honestly say that from my house, I only have to walk a couple of blocks and I’m already in the city center, so there’s no reason to complain, much less refuse to be diligent in this regard. Even in the early hours of the morning, you can be surprised by the calm of a city that, although very small, never seems to sleep—there are always people coming and going from somewhere.
All the photos are mine.
Original text in Spanish, translated at DeepL.
Thank you for taking the time to read this post.
See you soon.