Just after classes were finishing and the beautiful sunset swathed campus into a golden hour glow, I found myself serendipitously exploring the natural areas of UC Berkeley, marveling at the trees and rivers for a quaint five minutes. Then, I fucking blasted through 3 hours of TikTok in the middle of Strawberry Creek.
Now, look, all I was going to do was take a picture of the sunset and post it on my Instagram story so everyone could see how cool and awesome I was for ignoring my responsibilities and doing, like, meditative yoga or a healthy picnic or something like that outside – #selfcare, #detox. But then, I got a Slack notification from my unpaid internship, and I just had to suck up to the person who could maybe pay me, sometime, in the future. And then after that, it was BeReal time! And then after that, I saw my crush’s BeReal was with fucking Elizabeth from freshman year Data 8. I bet Elizabeth doesn’t even know what a tree is. So okay, yes, I stalked her Instagram for a bit, and then made a vague post about the both of them on my Harry Styles fan account that neither of them know about, and then… I can’t really remember after that, but I looked up and there were already stars in the sky.
“Wow”, I thought to myself, “I’ve been out here, enjoying nature, just living life, for all this time!” When you really take a moment to look at the world around you, without distractions, it’s like time disappears. But okay, I know I wasn’t fully enjoying nature, and maybe I was a little bit distracted, but being alive is hard, okay? God forbid I use my free time freely.
Besides, nature isn’t going anywhere. I have so many years left on this Earth, so I’m practically invincible anyway. I’ll appreciate it fully and live in the moment… next time. Or the time after that.