The influx of regret first hit me by the Plague Column: an exquisitely ornate Baroque memorial with embellished gold iconography. I had been in Vienna for fifteen hours, and the toll of isolation was bearing down on me with a harsh frigidity, instilling in me something I had forgotten in lieu of my wanderlust: I cannot thrive alone. To ache with such despair beneath a bleak, passionless January sky is profoundly demoralising; the absence of light is a sickness to our nature. My limbo was the the Graben, lonesome in its romantic crowds and chilling in its creamy, mint intricacies. I hope I would have escaped this desolation some other way had I not, in my freezing endeavours heard the faint warmth of a jazz piano, followed distantly by the animated vibrations of a double bass. Driven delirious by solitude, something within me was galvanised by such familiarity, and propelled me towards the sound. As if rushing me onwards, the wind began to curl more bitterly, and the air ebb more icily. At first I couldn't find it; the jumbled letters 'JAZZLAND' seemingly lead to an empty, alleyway shrouded in gloom. It was the glowing of a distant stranger's cigarette that suggested there was life beyond the fuzzy darkness, and as dusk gave way to shadows, the jazz grew stronger, drawing me closer. A door marked the end of the trail - a door that murmured with a muffled clamour, thin lines of light seeping through the cracks. A door that, upon pushing open, flings you into a soul-igniting, smokey, vintage effervescence, where jazz drips from the ceiling like rich honey and a golden glow emanates from the lowly-lit lamps. Only yards away, a pianist, double bassist, saxophonist and trumpeter were melting languidly into the groove of 'Fever', perfectly synchronised in their musical whims. I dwell on these happenings, because they illustrate that in the ardent nature of curiosity, we are distracted from the despondency of negative emotion. Fascination, and to a further extent, purpose, drive us. To be aimless is to be lost, and to be lost is to despair. When I arrived in Vienna, the dream was to wander, to gaze and to be enamoured in an enchanting European city. It was to wait for the charm rather than to seek it out. Only in retrospect do I see how senseless that ambition was - if it can even be referred to as an ambition. As humans we crave purpose and destination, henceforth why curiosity is so important and inherent to us. The anonymity of solo-travelling, and the lack of community can feel stagnant, and without the effort to forge a path we are left drifting. However, to actively seek out or create life's charms is revolutionary, not only in solo-travel, but everywhere. Putting this into practise engulfed me into a deep affection for Vienna, and brought my attention to its most captivating intricacies. Upon rising in the morning, a destination was to be discussed and decided amongst the party (myself and a mustard notebook), and left unscheduled so as not to vanquish the unrestricted spontaneity of discovering a city alone. With a purpose, my meanderings of the city did not feel idle, but exploratory and fulfilling. January's greyed skies became silvery and pearl-like; its bitter air became wintry and mystically misty, and its bare trees became gothically alluring. Most frequently, I would indulge in Viennese coffee culture, and take myself to the cafes where red-velvet encases the walls, and delightful jazz floats through from the bar all the way to the cosy fire crackling by the oak table of reading material. One might argue that there is something aimless about lounging in a coffeehouse for mornings on end, admiring the fresh sprinkling of snow from frosted windows, however, the curiosity does not stop there. It is everywhere, from perusing the quaintly stamped menu, to observing the eccentric characters swanning about, to spilling lucid words into your mustard notebook, to deciding on the next destination - be it the clock museum or the honey boutique. To be purposeless is to be lost; it only births nihilism, and futility. However, to be curious is to unveil a whole realm of delights. To seek the charm in life is to stumble on knowledge, to unveil destinations and to delve into the earth. As humans, it is our purpose to be curious.

I often find myself getting a haircut when it's just the length I want it. I often find myself wanting to go home when I'm on my dream vacation, halfway across the world. I want to change my name, move three states away, quit my favorite sport, and then move back home again, just so I can repeat the same exact process. I'm hungry. Hungry for something new and exciting, something a little meatier than what I'm used to. Or maybe all I want is for that meat to alternate between being cooked just right, and giving me the meanest stomach ache of all time. See, I've been in touch with my sanity and lack thereof lately, and I think my heart has ADHD. Not me though; we want different things. My heart tends to yell at me, demanding something. It's a needy little brat sometimes. Yet the second I give it what it wants, it spits it back out at me, a crumpled dollar bill being rejected by a vending machine. I've never really had a best friend. I've been extremely close with people, but never really locked in that sense of commitment. My neck shone bare, as the other third grade girls would wear their shiny heart necklace alliances. One half of the silver heart boasted “Best,” the other bragged “Friends.” If you were lucky, you'd get to join and turn it into a group of three, adding “Forever.” I often wondered if it would still count if I bought the necklace set and then wore all three myself. Society pointed to no. I was never that bothered by it, though. I had my friendly faces in the hall. Ironically, I often found myself having the most connection with my teachers instead. What terrified my third grade self was the last of the three words that hung on the girls' necks: “Forever.” When I thought about my forever, I wanted it to contain faces that I had yet to meet. I wanted unpredictability and constant shifting. I was never into having one best friend. I didn't like all the strings that came with that, regardless of whether they were good or bad. I was never into the obligations of the known, of the expected. Although (surprisingly) more than my fashion sense has changed since then, I still like being string-less. My utter indecisiveness has surfaced time after time, as a boyfriend becomes an ex, then a boyfriend, then an ex, repeating for an entire year. The words “I don't know” like to loop around my head and encompass my heart. Not because I have a lack of opinions, but because I have conflicting ones. I'm on the debate team this year and the hardest person I have yet to face is myself… I get Last Speaker every time. It seems that with all this moving around to different beliefs, styles, friend groups, I got divided somewhere along the way. I think just last week I accidentally left a little piece of me at the bus stop, and the week before, one at my neighbor's house. So whenever a gust of wind comes, everything plays out a little differently. Being constantly and blindly divided often immediately elicits a negative connotation, but in my opinion, it's more worth it. It's healthier. I have covered more ground than a lot of my friends because of my addiction with this drug of unadulterated change. When you close your eyes and throw yourself up in pieces into the air, that gust of wind is what more people should be letting guide them. I have no clue what I will be doing one year from now, let alone three. Truly, I have no clue what I will be doing this weekend. I might just pick up learning Sign Language again. I might just dye my hair blue and hang up Pink Floyd posters on my wall, leather studded gloves and all. It's taken my whole life to accept the fact that I, collectively, am a scattered and shifting animal. I am ruthlessly anxious for everything that the word “new” elicits. Dangerous as it is, scorned as it is, I find consolation in the rhythm of diversity. My heart feels warmed when sealed and stamped in an envelope of the unknown. I will continue to fill my days with rash decisions and blind dates. I will pledge to embrace the rain, but then open my umbrella a few minutes in. For the beauty of contentedness is not in finding one place you're happy and just hiding out there. It's more of a culmination of times and people and feelings that you find with an unexpected gust of wind. I often land with my insides on my outside and my outsides all scratched up, but somehow, for the past seventeen years, I always land on my feet.