Last week, I returned to a place I spent a lot of time at last year: the library.
It was the first time I had been to the library since I began traveling earlier this year. And it put me in a weird place.
I worked from home in 2021, writing about the stock market and other things. To save my sanity, I tried to go to the library for as many workdays as possible.
I got a lot done there. I wrote a lot of the newsletters you have read. I wrote a lot of articles on Medium. And I did a lot of work for my actual job, too.
When winter time rolled around, I was depressed. With such little social interaction and no passion for my job, I was in my head more than ever.
I was sad about not having a girlfriend. I felt like I wasn’t doing enough in life. And all I had to look at on a daily basis was a computer screen that offered no answers.
So walking back into that place was surreal. Nothing had changed inside it. The people seemed to be the same. The books were the same. But I was completely different.
It reminded me of my back patio, a place I am very fond of and have written about before. It’s the place where I spent countless hours thinking about the girl that inspired my first book, and the place I spent more hours writing my second book.
It’s just a patio. But because of my experiences there, it’s a place I’ll never forget.
It is weird to return to these places and think about our past there. Sometimes it gives us fond memories of old times, or agonizing pain from a past we don’t want to relive.
Sometimes, you don’t know what’s going to happen until you get there and soak up the energy that still resides.
So yeah, I went to the library and am making a big deal about it. But that trip was a reminder of how far I’ve come in such a short time—and just how quickly things can change, even when you don’t expect it.