29/09/2025 - Find your own vehicle. Mine’s a spaceship.

I’m sitting in an old English pub in the center of León with a beer, some olives, and my laptop. The music floats between old rock and jazz, and the atmosphere feels soft, cosy, comforting. I love places like this, especially on a Monday night. People have work tomorrow; the start of the week makes everyone quieter, more contained. Their voices blend into a low hum, and the rich taste of the ale soothes me tonight. My eyelids are heavy. I’m tired inside. Not unusually so. This journey demands a kind of dedication that carves grit into your being.

I was posting my daily entry on my blog, and just a reminder that what I share is always a week behind what I live. It’s fascinating to re-meet myself from seven days ago, to glimpse who I was, where I was, and what was alive in me then. This week’s entries are all about love, the love of my life, its idea, its essence, all of it. Which is funny, because I was ovulating. AHAHA. I can’t with my own scientific self-observations sometimes. I was literally ovulating while writing about finding the man I’ll have babies with. Hormones run the show, our thoughts, our cravings, our entire beings. And honestly, I find that beautiful.

And now, of course, comes the next act: the luteal phase. That sacred, slightly cursed time when the body lowers its rhythm, accepts the quiet disappointment of not being impregnated, and prepares for yet another symbolic death. It turns us into some strange hybrid, half-powerful witch, half-exhausted zombie.

I knew I’d officially entered my luteal phase today. The familiar signs appeared, along with a wave of antisocial energy. It doesn’t mean I had a bad day, just that I felt slower, more introspective, less eager for emotional highs, more willing to face little inner battles head-on. Let me tell you about one of them.

I woke up after a mediocre night around 6:30am, stirred by pilgrims getting ready around me. Brushed my teeth, splashed my face, packed my bag, and headed down for coffee. I called my dad and sister, as has become a morning ritual. My dad lives in Indonesia and my sister in Australia, so this early hour happens to be perfect for all of us.

The call quickly turned, let’s say, spicy. We’re all stubborn, direct, and opinionated, three know-it-alls in one conversation. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, sparks fly. My sister mentioned she’d gone for blood tests because she’s been losing hair and was sick for a month. I understand the concern, but there’s been a virus going around. In small places like Verbier, everyone catches it and it lingers for ages. Therefore, I have no doubt in a city, it's the same too.

Still, I might have been a little too blunt. I told her blood tests are, in my opinion, a bit of a hoax. Our levels fluctuate depending on what we eat, how we sleep, or the phase of the moon for all I know. I’ve never been a fan of modern medicine. Losing my mother to leukemia, watching her fade through chemotherapy, left me deeply skeptical. I can’t subscribe to the idea that when something is wrong in the body, we should suppress it instead of listening to it.

I’m not entirely against medicine. I just believe it should complement psychosomatic and holistic approaches. To rely solely on Western methods feels dehumanizing and detached from the mystery of healing. But that’s a longer conversation for another time.

I protested my sister’s choice before she even finished her sentence. Classic me. I tend to protect her, wanting to save her time, to spare her mistakes I’ve already made. But by doing that, I sometimes rob her of her own discoveries. Soon enough, we were throwing around words like Chinese medicine, crown chakra, stress, and control. My dad, unbothered, just watched us on the video call, waiting for the storm to pass. Within minutes, we were laughing again.

Still, her words stuck with me. She said that I think too much, and that my arguments are irrational. I brushed it off at first but later found myself turning it over in my mind. It touched a tender nerve, the one that’s been raw my whole life. I texted her afterward, telling her it bothered me, wanting to be honest. She replied with a long message saying I’ve taken on the “one who knows” role in the family, that I struggle to accept outside perspectives, that I live too much in my head and take things too seriously. It irritated me, of course.

But I breathed and stayed open. I considered her words. Maybe she’s right, partly. Especially with her and my dad, I still have the instinct to direct the conversation toward my vision of things. I’ve softened with time, but there’s room for improvement. Yet about thinking too much or my logic being unfounded, I refuse to apologize for that.

I’ve heard it my whole life: you think too much, too deep, too far. But thinking deeply isn’t taking life seriously, it’s honoring it. I was given the ability to dive beneath the surface, to breathe underwater, and I won’t apologize for exploring what others find uncomfortable. It’s a gift, and I won’t shame it again. I love my mind, the way it travels through layers of the human psyche, relationships, and hidden patterns. It fascinates me endlessly.

As for my so-called irrational logic, I know my reasoning isn’t linear. It flows through intuition, correlations, observation, experience, and some kind of ancestral knowing that has no clear origin. Through trees, stars, the breath of a butterfly, and maybe your mum’s ass. (Just kidding. Or maybe not. There’s wisdom in strange places.)

The truth is, I don’t know anything for sure. I just follow the thread, and somehow it makes sense to me. And over time, I’ve noticed it makes sense to others too. My way of thinking is just my way of traveling from point A to point B. Yours might be different; find your own vehicle. Mine’s a spaceship. I built it piece by piece. I’m an engineer of the human mind, a visionary of the future. And if someone doesn’t get it, that’s fine too. I’m done overexplaining how I work.

By the end of our exchange, I felt lighter, more anchored in who I’m becoming. This experience keeps showing me how much more at ease I am with every corner of myself. I spend four to six hours a day inside my head; I’ve had time to renovate it well. Add new perspectives, clean, organize, decorate, and paint layers guided by the visions of my heart and the desires my gut leads me toward.

The walk went smoothly, except for another stretch through an industrial zone before León. But the city itself is beautiful, maybe my favorite big one so far. I checked into a small hostel, not pilgrim-specific but cosy, with curtains around the beds. The small luxury of privacy. Then I went out for Italian food and ate a three-course meal that nearly made me explode, before falling into a heavenly nap back at the hostel.

Which brings me to now, in this warm little pub where I’ve been sitting for the past hour. I’m proud of myself for showing up to these pages every single day of the Camino. What a reference point I’m creating, a living map of discipline and devotion I can look back on whenever I doubt myself. Proud feels actually like an understatement right now. Yes me, go me!

With love, Loune.