Molly Carroll

Lately I’ve felt myself drift into autopilot. Performing day to day tasks with little to no enjoyment. Taking care of basic human needs and functions not because I wanted to, but because I felt I needed to. Going to work and giving it my all only to come home and scrape by with the bare minimum, lacking excitement to actively participate in my own life and spending waaaay too much time on my phone. 

Anyway, I woke up the other day – at 1pm, of course, post night shift – with the intention of finding ways to get me excited to participate in my day. I turned my phone off and followed the first instinct that gave me that eager butterfly feeling. I was chasing an elation similar to anticipating plans you’ve really been looking forward to. Next thing I know, I’m knee deep in the fiction section of Barnes & Noble.

I surprised myself by walking out the door with new copies of two classics – The Great Gatsby and Tender is the Night. Clearly, the right side of my brain needed some action and my left-sided nursing brain was calling out for a breather.

Side note – I could go on a full tangent comparing and contrasting classic and modern literature, but for the time being I will just say that revisiting the classics after a hiatus is like realizing you haven’t had ice cream in a few months, indulging in a scoop or two, and never wanting to get to the last bite because you’ve forgotten it’s that damn good.

Gatsby and I had been out of touch ever since my early high school years. After wrapping up the first chapter once I got home, I became simultaneously nostalgic, remembering the version of myself I was reading it for the first time, and acutely aware of my growth – how unbelievably different I am now as Gatsby and I reunite years later. I never fully appreciated the beauty of Fitzgerald’s words then as a naive, fourteen year old ball of social anxiety. I was probably too focused on how to safely navigate my way from English class to my locker only to deposit myself in my next class where I’d sit anticipating my next move of the day. At the end of the day, I would come home after practice to greet my mom making dinner and plop myself next to my brothers (who were also starting their homework) at the kitchen table, blindly flipping my borrowed copy of Gatsby to whichever section I had been assigned that night. I would proceed to half read, half banter with my brothers, and probably check snapchat a multitude of times in between, until I resorted to SparkNotes to help me answer the five questions my teacher posed to coincide with the assigned section.

Fast forward to the present day, where I find myself picking up something I once viewed as a chore, to now help bring a bit of uncomplicated bliss to my day. Something that I willingly allowed to occupy three uninterrupted hours of my morning today when I woke at 6:00am and was unable to fall back to sleep. I now find myself eagerly thrown into his story, analyzing every bit of Fitzgerald’s prose with pen in hand, my handwriting excitedly scribbled in the margins.

All this just goes to show – hobbies, man. They’re essential to pulling yourself out of autopilot and getting you excited about pieces of life, instead of simply surviving it. (Even if it’s as simple as reading a good book).

And tomorrow, we cook.