Finding My Way Without A Map

 Recently, I created a Twitter account for my art project I have been working on for the past few months. I used to be really active on Twitter about eight years ago, and since then, I have not used the platform at all. It felt weird going back, but I think Twitter is way better of a platform for what I'm doing now than Instagram. For more information about the art project itself, read the page "Death On A Paper" Art Project. My Twitter handle is @deathonapaper as well.

I am only starting things out, and for the most part, I feel like I don't even know what I want to do. I know what I am doing, as of right now, but where I want all of this to lead...of that I have no idea. I am stumbling through a dark corridor, feeling up the walls and looking for a light switch. Now, when I have no lights with me, the journey is quite scary, and it makes me anxious. But I am sure that eventually, I will find that light switch, and at least one lamp will light up in the dark corridor and guide me through. Right now, I just have to keep on looking.

I have never been that good at reading maps. Back at school, in PE class, we did a lot of orienteering. There's a very big orienteering community in Finland, and our forests are used for some of the most famous orienteering competitions. Every time we had orienteering in PE, which was always either in September or in May, I was really excited and eager to get things going. For some reason, I always forgot that with orienteering comes a lot of map reading. And I forgot how terribly me and maps go together. 

What made orienteering fun for me was the nature. I love Finnish forests, all the trees and plants; I loved being surrounded by them and feel the water seeping through my shoes as I walked on that swampy ground. I loved the smell of rain in September, the autumn colors that are always so bright here in Finland. Orienteering meant that I had the freedom to run through the forests of my beautiful homeland, and there was nothing more relaxing when I was a kid. 

More often than not, I got lost. We went in pairs, and my friend always gave me the pleasure of reading the map because I thought I had somehow learned how to interpret the weird lines on the paper overnight. We finished last usually, or the second or something. It was embarrassing enough for my friend, but I got all the blame. But for some reason, it never made me as upset as it could have. 

lyrics by gerard way, "foundations of decay", performed by my chemical romance.

Map reading is the essence of orienteering, but for me, it was never really about that. What mattered more than whether I was able to understand a silly little drawing someone made and decided to call a map was the run. The run through the forests, tripping over rocks and getting a shoe stuck in a swamp. The journey was what I was always looking forward to, and the journey was always the most important part. 

I think I have lost all of my maps a long time ago. Or maybe I wasn't given that many of them to begin with. Either way, for most of my life, I've tried to find my way through without guidance – because I was not given another choice. Sometimes that has lead to very bumpy and winding roads, but I want to think I have always been able to make something out of the journey itself.

This time is no different. I'm back in a familiar forest with the smell of rain and grass surrounding me, and I don't have a map. And I don't think I really need one. We never got along, anyway.

On my way,

ichigonya