The Wheels are Wheeling

It's coming back from the ashes... somehow.

Good Morning! Happy Sunday.

This post was originally intended for last week but was moved around. We’re all set now.

I hope people enjoy!

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After one goes through a massive experience, it is not uncommon to compare a lot around you to that experience. Or to talk about that experience excessively for a long period after.

I haven’t spoken to many (external) people privately about my Wheels experience. Two close friends did know everything that happened, and of course my therapist did. But for the most part, I kept mum. Silent. If some location was brought up, I’d respond with “Oh, I was there. It’s pretty cool.”

The first alarm that brought this topic to my attention were ads coming up on my Instagram advertising teen travel tours. But, that doesn’t apply to me anymore. I went through a niche/specialized organization. So why am I getting these general ads? I certainly don’t do anything of the sort anymore. Perhaps because my family was looking for options for my sibling? Or maybe just Meta trying to milk any money from me. But still.

Next, a message in my dreams. Usually, my dreams are extremely unrealistic. Like: me somehow able to travel to Neptune alone. This dream had a bit more grounding to it. I was reading through the magazine stand to look at magazines that were sent to my home, and noticed something particular. A brochure titled “USY Summer Programs 2028” with me and some other people in a forest.

Hold up, how am I in there? I certainly don’t remember that picture being taken. Maybe that picture could have been taken in Oregon, but that’s a stretch at best. Who were those other people? They look so familiar but I can’t put names to the faces. A shallow interpretation could be that they “are people I once knew but lost in touch with”. That’s what any wannabe philosopher would say. But more so of the why. I haven’t been in touch with anybody from either trip. So something must be more amiss.

The picture is a piece of evidence that anyone (including half-miserable sods like yours truly), can enjoy themselves on these summer programs.

To answer the “why me?” front of the dream: I suspect it’s because of my criticism of USY as an organization, and my own belief of how the future of the organization is going to play out based on what I know.

No, I’m not sharing anything further. I am privy to information I can’t share. So I’d rather not be the whistleblower for this particular issue. (Wink wink nudge nudge).

Also probably the fact that dreams are self-centered so it would only make sense to care if you are a subject in the piece. 2028 signifies the year I will hopefully be graduating from school.

Moving on from that strange dream, the next morning I had my Creative Writing class. Which I am taking at school as an elective to better my storytelling skills. The first thing we do every day to start (apparently) is to journal. I wasn’t going to get a new diary when I had a perfectly good one that was only used twice. On Wheels. The last entry was July 8, 2022. But we’re not going to count that as that’s a frequent thing and not a one-off.

We did an activity that involved writing little notes of what we liked about our peers and giving them the notes. It was a wholesome time. Honestly! I’m saying that as someone who has become disenchanted with such corny things. With the pre-made designs of the notes and stuff, it almost reminded me of the last time I did it…. on Wheels.

Of course, this wouldn’t mean anything if that was the only issue. But the morning right after I had a strange dream about the programs? Especially considering their in-depth of them. From people you don’t know that well…

At this point: you should be able to see where I’m going. It just seemed like the world was trying to scream at me to do something. I almost put the notes I got during class with the other notes from the program. Which have and will remain confined in a glass mason jar indefinitely, or if I see a reason to open it up.

The final piece of this strange puzzle comes from the next day in my Creative Writing class when we did a personality test. A personality test that I did at 1AM in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, spurred by someone on my Wheels trip.

You would think that now: bright at 10AM at school, I might have a different result for me. But no, I got the same personality type! INTJ-T. A rarer personality type that condemns me to intellectual curiosity, emotional misery, and more.

These four incidents/events, on their own, would amount to absolutely nothing. But combined, alongside the timing of which they occurred, is truly something else.

Maybe this is a warning from above? Get in line and stop voicing your criticisms? Reach out to those who haven’t done that and vice versa yet? I honestly don’t know. But as I head into my final round of revisions before the slow release of the Wheels posts on this newsletter. After the posts, that should be the end of that topic across all of my works.

Or maybe this post simply highlights my mental flaws and my looking into small nitpicks too closely.

I’m not sure if I want to know whether this is all by coincidence or not. I haven’t thought much of the trip for a very long time. Trying to cram it to the inner depths of my mind. I have found it best to not dwell too much on the past. Perhaps I will release “remastered” versions on here. But we’ll see what happens

Whatever the case is, I just want to sleep soundly at night and not have to worry about past mistakes and regrets. Is that too hard to ask?