Slow my breath

It's down to single digit days until I leave for my adventure to the mysterious PyeongChang. I keep leaning back and digging in my heels deep into the ground in hopes to slow time down. It seems to have no effect. Father Time waits for no one, including the nervous girl awaiting her adventure. 

I find myself in a daze of numbers and dates. I leave the 8th, at 6:15am, and our plane ride is 14 hours long. We'll land at 4:30 p.m. in Seoul, South Korea. I have 7 days until I leave and I have exactly, 168 hours, 46 minutes and 45 seconds until I leave. Everything is in numbers. That makes this adventure seem a little less real. Though I do it to myself-- the count down and the haze I put myself into. I am not sure how else to cope with the excitement and stress. 

Along with a daze, I'm terribly confused. Every time I see an Olympics commercial my eyes swell up with crocodile tears and I am crying into a bloody mary at a bar. "I can't help it!" I'll scream, "I don't really know why I am crying, but I am!" Thankfully, I usually have someone there to crest my hand and my racing heart slows. 

So here I am. Dazed and confused with my emotions and stress. I have a small bottle of stress relief hand sanitizer I keep in my pocket, but I am considering bathing myself in the sweet smelling liquid in hopes to slow my heart rate. My life is everything but calm right now. But I think it is because I forget to step back-- I forget to breathe. 

Twice a week our team will meet for three hours hoping to make sense of the mess we've made. Though we try, it typically does not help. We try to wrap our hands around this huge idea, but we soon realize there are only six of us and we can only do so much. Then my breathing spirals out of control, once again. 

This thing, this mess, this insanely huge extremely ridiculous adventure we are planning is easily the largest event in my career, thus far. For everyone else in the group, I am sure they will say the same thing. We're students trying to execute a plan to distribute content as quickly and efficiently as possible. Our mess continues to get larger and our heart rate gets faster. Somewhere between the late nights in the Unified Media Lab and working along sidelines, we find a breath of fresh air. The reminder on why we are willing to take on messes like going to Olympics. Soon enough that mess turns into a challenge-- A great and exciting challenge. The chaos of our lives surely drives us to have one or two extra drinks at the end of a long week, but that is why we chose the professors we did. It's for these moments that take our breath away. 

So we have one week until we can wrap our hands around this mess. We have one week before we step foot onto a plane to an adventure of a lifetime. And my breath, will once again quicken. But the moment I step foot into Korea, the moment I pick up my camera and look through the view finder, I'll regain control over my racing heart. And Father Time, will finally slow my racing days down to the longest of seconds-- Leaving that nervous girl behind. 

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