Things I'm Doing Instead Of Packing - Letters From Slovakia

At the time of me writing this, I have about 60 hours left until I am put on an airplane and sent zooming out of the United States. That’s 3600 minutes, or 216,000 seconds, and this is what I’m doing instead of—I don’t know—packing for eight months abroad. I’m surprised at how zen I feel, with the weight of everything pressing down on me and all. But whatever. We’re here. We’re calm. We won’t be here in two days. We won’t be calm in two days. We’ll be on a commercial aircraft barreling toward Vienna in two days. Geez. We are calm. How the hell are we calm?

So I thought I would chart exactly what I’m doing to procrastinate. For starters, I’ve spent maybe twenty hours of the last week playing Skyrim, since my Nintendo Switch technically belongs to my brother and he doesn’t want me bringing it across the Atlantic. I am, of course, playing all of the fun builds (stealth archer, stealth archer, and stealth archer) while I still have time. Lord knows when I’ll be able to play video games ever again. I’m not paying another sixty bucks just to get that on my PC. My laptop barely runs RuneScape. How the hell would it run Skyrim?

That’s not all! Last night, instead of taking inventory of what I need to bring with me, I decided to write a 1,200-word breakdown of an awful Tinder bio my friend Val sent me. The intent, of course, was to publish it on here. At the time of this article’s writing, I have no idea whether or not it’s been accepted by the Vocal-Gods, but the pessimist in me obviously isn’t feeling optimistic about it. Delightful. I spent almost an hour on that piece, and with my luck, it’ll earn maybe 30 or so views, which is still a better hourly wage than every unpaid internship, so. Great!

I spent about five minutes googling pictures of Shane Madej and Pete Townshend because I thought they kind of looked similar. As of right now the Tweet has gotten zero likes and has been an immense waste of my time. I sent it to my friend and they laugh-reacted it, so I guess that’s kind of a payoff, but it’s not the same.

But most importantly, I am working on resurrecting my following on Vocal. I tapered off when I left for Ukraine this past summer, but now that I’ll be moving a little more permanently to Slovakia, I thought that now’s as good a time as any to start solidifying my reader base. I’ve started an Instagram dedicated to Vocal so as to not clutter up my main, and I’ve spent several hours yesterday and today trying to grow that page as best I can. Not only that, but I planned out content for the next several months, including an episodic novel, journals from Slovakia, and reviews of very specific characters and episodes of Seinfeld.

Truth be told, I’m in good shape. I’m actually not too nervous about the journey or the job, and I kind of just want the next two days to pass as quickly as possible. I’ve packed two suitcases and have all of my necessary paperwork on-hand. I think I know where everything else I need is. If I don’t, I have over 48 whole hours to figure it out. Anyway, thank you so much for reading, even if I didn’t say much. This isn’t a letter from Slovakia, per se, since I’m not actually in Slovakia, but we’ll get there. Probably the next installment will be from at least on the same continent.