This morning, I woke up a little disoriented—the kind of feeling where, for a moment, you don’t quite know where you are. Then it hits: you really are completely away. It’s like waking from a dream, only to realize the dream is real, and you’re living inside it. The distance, the strangeness—it’s all still real. And so is the disorientation. Even after almost a month.
Before I left, my dad told me he’d woken up feeling that same kind of lost. He thought he was in a hotel, maybe off on a trip somewhere. I joked and asked if it was a nice place, then suggested he stay there. We both laughed. I was trying to keep it light, but I could tell it unsettled him.
It wasn’t quite the same as what I felt this morning, but that feeling of disorientation—that quiet disconnect—hangs in the air long after it arrives.
Sometimes, when I go out, I feel awkward. Out of place. It’s that introverted thing, but also being surrounded by people who are younger, more rooted in a moment I’ve already moved through. You feel like you’re fading—like you can’t quite land in the moment. There are too many voices, too much motion, and it takes everything you have just to say two words.
Shannon, my boss, recently wrote a book. In it, there’s a section about authenticity and the deep pull to be accepted. How that need can nudge you off course—slowly, subtly—until you find yourself reshaped. You recalibrate, adjust, bend. And eventually, what’s left doesn’t really feel like you anymore.
I’ve been bumping into that feeling—that impulse to be more current. To make something that doesn’t feel… old. Lately, I’ve been thinking about what it means to be more myself—not the version that fits in easily, but the one that feels honest.
One night, at an izakaya, that feeling welled up. I carried it home with me.
I didn’t want to play. I was frustrated, tired and done. But I picked up my violin anyway.
And something shifted.
Maybe music is how I reach for something larger. When I play, I feel the gift my parents gave me—the discipline, the repetition, the daily insistence to try, even when I hated it.
And in that moment, something opened.
I could feel it—that something from somewhere else. A connection to what’s invisible. So maybe it’s okay to be quiet. To be invisible.
Maybe that’s what music is for me—not just expression, but a tether. A thread that leads me back when I feel like I’m unraveling.
I don’t know.
All I know is: today, I just want to stay in my room.