Postcard 028 - Jet Lag
London has both been a breath of fresh air and a massive brain fog.
I left Seattle last Wednesday around 1:30pm, flew about 10 hours, and landed at 6:30am on Thursday morning. Disoriented doesn't even start to describe how I felt.
Thankfully, I powered through that day, lasting til about 10pm when I crashed, reviewing my talk slides in bed on my phone. I woke up to a nearly dead phone, thankfully an hour or so before I needed to be up, and decided to embrace the morning and prepare for my talk. I'll leave details of the rest of the day for another time, but the talk went much better than expected, which I'm wildly grateful for given that it was my first international keynote and a 45 minute one at that (a long time to talk for an introvert).
In the days that followed, I was able to see old friends, meet Internet ones in person, and roam around a city I truly enjoy being in. I took myself on a solo adventure in the Tate Modern (photos to come), and have eaten many delicious things. But the hardest part about being here has been my energy — it's truly all over the place. I thought I kicked jet lag in the first few days, but it would hit me at the strangest time and I'd be exhausted at random hours. Instead of trying to fight it, I've focused on doing what I have to each day personally and professionally, and tried to take it easy aside from that. It's meant that I've had to give myself a lot more grace and simply... be.
One of the interesting side effects of being in a city that is so steeped in history and has buildings that remind you of it, is that I regularly feel like Hercule Poirot when I'm drinking tea or coffee and emptying my thoughts onto paper, like this morning's photo from Dishoom.
I think back to a time when people crossed the Atlantic Ocean by ship, taking on a much longer journey than my 10 hour flight, with much less certainty (and perhaps more fanfare?). When a letter was the fastest way to reach someone and if a person ran late, you probably just ordered another tea and waited.
Silly things to marinate on, but I'll blame the jet lag and my wandering mind for now. More photos from the trip soon.