12 Nov What Am I Doing Here? The Adventure Begins
As my departure date draws near, I’m sure you all are wondering…What does it all mean? What am I doing here? Where the hell am I?
Yeah, those are pretty regular questions for me, too. Especially the morning after a late-night bender. Just kidding. Maybe.
But really, Where am I going? why do I have this blog? What could I possibly have compared to other super-awesome-well-established travel blogs that would maintain your interest?
Where Am I Going?
That’s an awesome question. Unfortunately (or fortunately?), I don’t have a straight-forward answer. I have ideas, not plans. I don’t know exactly where I’m going, I’m just starting somewhere…My one-way flight arrives at 12:50AM in Bangkok, Thailand, and I have a couple of nights booked at a hostel near the Jim Thompson House. Past that? I’m not really sure. I have a general idea, of course. I think I’m going to stay about two months in Thailand, since a friend is meeting me there in December. Then I’ll probably move on to Myanmar (Burma), Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, and maybe some parts of Indonesia, in approximately that order.
Timeline? Who knows?
I have some friends and family traveling next year. Maybe I can meet them abroad. Maybe I’ll get homesick and return to the States. Or maybe I’ll fall in love with one of these places and stay for a period of time. I don’t know, I just don’t want to limit myself.
Once you set an expectation, you limit your horizons. It induces fear. It leads to disappointment anad frustration: ‘What happens if I miss or fail to meet my expectations? What if it’s not what I thought it would be?’ I associate this with ‘The Four Agreements’ by don Miguel Ruiz and try to be conscious of this on a daily basis. If you set expectations ahead of time, you can only win or lose. But if I just ‘Always Do My Best’ and ‘Avoid Assumptions’, my expectations (or a more preferable word, my intentions) will change day by day. Because I and my abilities change day by day, based on my surroundings, and my mental, emotional, and physical health.
So, what I’ve done is set a broad intention for this trip, rather than creating an itinerary. My purpose is tolet go. To let my travels take me where they will. To take this journey day by day and evaluate how I feel and how best to follow those feelings in guiding my days. If I feel lonely and sad and want to spend all day in bed with tea, then thats damn well what I’m going to do. I don’t care if I’m in the most beautiful place in the world – It will likely still be there tomorrow when I feel better.
What I don’t want this trip to be is a frantic bunny hop from tourist site to tourist site, just so I can have the pictures proving I was there. That’s why I bought a one way ticket and left the trip open-ended. I have spent so much of my life doing what other people wanted of me, pursuing a career I didn’t like (and knew I wouldn’t like), and doing things out of FEAR. I have an extremely nervous persona, though it may not be outwardly obvious. I’m easily stressed and overwhelmed. I suffer from depression, night terrors, and panic attacks. I agonize over the smallest details and I over-plan and over-prepare for just about everything.
So now it’s time to learn how to sit back and let the wind pick this fish up out of the water. Because it is a learning process. It won’t always be easy. But nothing good is ever easy, right? It takes some struggle to understand what is good in life.
One of my favorite Instagram users states my intentions perfectly. Please, please, please check out his inspiring post(s)
jedidiahjenkins: I wonder if our biggest fear is missed expectations. I was supposed to be successful by now. I was supposed to have found true love by now. I was supposed to be loving my job by now. I should do life this way or that way because that’s what I’m supposed to do, that’s what people expect of me. I had hopes and dreams, and I used to think thirty was old… and here i am, still figuring it out.
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My bike trip to Patagonia was inspired by my friend Andrew Morgan. He rode his bike from New Jersey to Argentina. When I heard about his trip I was enraptured by the adventure of it all and decided to do my own. He gave me the best advice:
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“Jed… this is your trip, no one else’s. Sure, you told everyone you were cycling from Oregon to Patagonia, but don’t get hung up on that. If you want to change course, do it. If you want to take a bus sometimes, do it. You don’t know what things you’ll feel and learn on the road, so don’t pre-decide how you’re going to react before you’re there. This is your adventure, no one else’s.”
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This advice revolutionized my whole trip. He taught me to find my true intention, not the expected form of it. Cycling from Oregon to Patagonia was the superficial shape of a spiritual intention: to live free and wild and see the world and taste whatever there is to taste on the backroads of everywhere. So long as I kept my true goal in mind, it didn’t matter what I did. I spent three weeks in Mexico City. Why? Because I liked it. And I wanted to.
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Andrew said, ‘you’re probably only going to do a trip like this once… make sure you’re doing it for you and no one else.’…..
What Am I Doing? Why Do I Have This Blog?
What am I doing here? That’s easy. Friends and family are probably the only people reading this at the moment. Hi, guys! I sure as hell hope you’re interested… Otherwise, what are YOU doing here??
I was planning on keeping a social blog anyways. Just something to talk about my day to day activities and let my family know what’s going on and where I am. Show a few pictures along the way. But the idea took seed when I was researching packing lists for my trip. I thought, why not try ‘real’ travel blogging? See what all the hype is about? It doesn’t cost that much to get going…Unless by some miracle enough people actually following me and I have to get paid plugins and such to improve the site.
I have a pretty good background for it, I think. I’m a bit rusty on my writing skills, but I’ve blogged before. I’ve traveled a lot of different places, including Ghana, Ecuador, Sweden, England, France, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, Ireland, and all over the United States. I LOVE sharing the cool stuff I find in these places, learning about the culture, and sharing my experiences. There’s even a nice sob-story background. I hated my job – worked myself to death until I paid off my student loans – got free and clear of debt – moved into a van with my significant other (that’s not part of the sob-story material, that was amazing-ness) – decided to follow my life-long dream of traveling through Southeast Asia.===> Gold!
I LOVE traveling. Some of my favorite experiences are when traveling – the initial heart-pounding anticipation, the first deep breath of air I’ve never tasted before, the thrilling sights and smells and colors, hearing different languages being spoken all around me…It gives me that tummy-dropping, chest-fit-to-burst feeling of…well, of intense FEELING! It is a completely immersive experience, that thrill. Not that it’s always sunshine and rainbows, but that’s part of the experience as well. The sadness and loneliness of being far from home is just as intense, and just as beautiful in its own way.
Needless to say, I’m into it.
So here I am, going for the full-on own domain blog website. One year trial run, with opportunities for extension.
What Could I Possibly Have Compared To Other Super-Awesome-Well-Established Travel Blogs That Would Maintain Your Interest?
Hell, I don’t know. I honestly have no idea what I’m doing. Sure, I’ll try to get into the whole ’30 best things to do while wearing clogs in Russia’ thing. I am trying to gain an audience and make enough money to at least off-set the cost of the domain. Mostly I’ll probably be talking about what I’m doing. Probably quite a bit about what I’m eating (I love a lot of things, but food is pretty high up there), how I’m feeling, and who I’m missing back home…Maybe I’ll write some poems or share info about communities that inspire me, like the Witches of Gambaga I met in Ghana:
Despite their situation, the Witches of Gambaga are a magical group of women (forgive the pun) who are pushing past adversity. They work hard, and they still love life. They are seeking a better life for their children. A life not filled with the pain their mothers experienced. You can learn and support them through the link below, but more importantly, please take a breif moment and take yourself away – Take notice of the sorts of things we find ridiculous or inhuman that are still occuring all over the world.
I just want to share my experience of the world and see if anyone else is interested as well. I have struggled in life. With life. I am constantly struggling to better my life, and experience as much of it as possible. I try to appreciate every grain of sand that comes into my life and see it for what it is…a miracle. Something beautiful that came from nothing. That pretty beetle in the middle of the path, awe-inspiring trees like the redwoods and sequoias, a breath-taking view after a long hike, an unexpected friend met on the road. Small or big, there is beauty all around us. That doesn’t mean that things are always positive, or that I’m happy all of the time. Quite the contrary, I have as much sadness as joy, and I have been known to get riled up occasionally. But the lows make the highs so much higher.
So That’s That….
I hope you follow along on my adventures through life. Southeast Asia is just another beginning for me, and the adventures will continue throughout my life. I hope this takes off, and speaking of taking off…
The thing that will keep this ball rolling is the funding I’m attempting to get on the website. It doesn’t cost you an extra penny, but it means the WORLD to me if you click through the ads or links on my site. I get some spare change and it doesn’t charge you anything extra when you click on my links and make that purchase with Amazon (and in the future maybe some other companies). And if Amazon doesn’t have what I’m looking for, I’ll still link to other websites, because there is a reason I’m posting a product or book for the world to see!
The Adventure is nigh…
naomi
Posted at 20:20h, 19 NovemberI miss you