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Musings of A World Traveller
Musings of A World Traveller
A couple years back, I made a fairly significant decision in my life. I decided that I would give up everything that I had accumulated to that point and travel the world. What followed was a very intense time of doubt about the choices that I made and also validation for the choices that I made! And growth. By no means a smooth growth curve, and the writing below reflects that! But growth none-the-less! This was a while back, it is now 2013 and Ive smoothed out (a bit) since then. I am still on the road and it is always good to look back and see where Ive come from!
WhyAmI DoingThis?
May1st, 2011 BuenosAires, Argentina
I could, here, talk about the amazing, heart breaking, and heart opening process Ive gone through the last nine months since I initiated this process of letting go of my life in order to travel the world. It has been an amazing lesson amazing lesson in appreciation. Everything around me, all things that have become familiar over the past twenty years feel alive. But I will start even further back. My life shifted 13 years ago. Back in January of 1998, I hurt myself pretty bad playing hockey. Busted my spleen and along with bursting my invincibility bubble. Yhis event unlocked some deeply seeded questions - who am I really and what is it that Im doing here? I had almost died and I didnt even know who I was other than a reflection of what I picked up from observing what was going on around me. Happy enough just to fit in. Happy and not so happy at the same time. To make a long and arguably interesting story short, much of my time over the last thirteen years has been spent not only contemplating these questions, but also actively searching for answers. Its been good, bad and downright ugly at times! And exacerbated by the fact that each time I peel back a supposed layer of myself to get a glimpse of who I might be underneath, Im met with this unnerving, cold feeling that beyond the image I have created to get by in this world there is nothing. A sense that if I strip it all away, peel back all the layers well, the feeling is Why do this? There is nothing there! A very cold and a very lonely nothing. Had I not injured myself that night thirteen years ago, the question of who I really am and what it is Im supposed to really be doing here may have remained a whisper to be ignored. Instead the volume of these questions have steadily risen and have underscored much of what Ive done the past thirteen years. And of course they are the very foundation of what Im about to launch myself into! One thing is clear to me though. I get a strong sense that expression for me right now is key. Give voice to whats rolling around inside of me. To give voice to my awkward attempts to gain insight into the questions. To the angst and fear, and not so quiet desperation that comes with that asking or more the answers! I touched on this stuff with a friend of mine. He was like Dude! I have no idea what you just said. I can totally not relate to that! Fair enough dude! It was good to say it though. I will gladly risk not being understood to express myself.
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LivingMy Dream?
May5th, 2011Somewherein Argentina!
Old habits seep back in like a stubborn persistent tide Bringing with them a wave of nausea and heart break And boredom, worthlessness and lifelessness Whats the fucking point if this is always what it comes back to? I feel like such a coward right now Living my dream or cowering in a hostel? I dont feel on fire with the passion of life I feel bored and scared and falling into same old patterns of escape Plotting my next move which also feels cowardice Worrying about money and cold and money Not exactly in the moment is it? Wanting to run as far from this place as possible
MoreHot WaterPlease?
May17th BuenosAiries
Ive just realized that I am going through life petrified of making mistakes. Absolutely paralyzed by it. Well actually Ive known that for a while though didnt know how deep it went. How pervasive it was my fear of doing something wrong for fear that someone might see me and think Hey that guy just did something wrong!. The horror!!! How ridiculous! How fucking paralyzing can you get? So just very recently Ive been purposefully doing things wrong, which is way outside my comfort zone! And then see how people react. Like tonight okay this is going to sound ridiculous I asked the waiter for more hot water. I had it in my head that you just dont do that here (Buenos Aires). Its not allowed. And believe it or not it took a lot of courage for me to do it! Pardon mas caliente agua por favor? I asked in my best pigeon Spanish and then braced myself for the NO YOU CANT have more hot water. How fucking inappropriate of you to ask that!!! Because somehow this is what I expect. (Where does that come from??) Anyways, as you can imagine, dude just says Si! No problemo And I am left kinda stunned and disappointed for all those second cups of tea I missed out on for being so afraid to make a mistake. I hope I have the guts to continue this little experiment and take bigger risks. Oh like maybe making a post to another blog with verbage that Im feeling is way too long and irrelevant to the topic : ) Continue to push past my fear of being wrong and deal with whatever consequences come with being wrong. Whats that saying? Its better to ask forgiveness than permission.?
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AngstIncorporated
May18th 2011 Argentinasomewhere?!
Fuck! Talk about a house of cards! Almost everything has folded up. Everything but the fear and anxiety. Okay Deeper Place what do you say about that? or am I talking to the thing that doesnt want me to access that deeper place? I know what that thing wants to do! It wants to avoid, avoid, avoid. Hence the ice cream later tonight! (Yum by the way!) I end up listening to that things voice a lot. That thing is trying to tell me that this writing thing is useless, boring, and stupid and that I need to quit kidding myself about even doing it, let alone dreaming about making a living out of it. That feeling is up! What is it? Where is it? It happens when Im writing. It happens when Im not writing. It is with me like an open wound saying You cant! Hmmm - a talking open wound. I just got a visual of that. Weird. An exhaustion about the writing thing. And my age. IM TOO OLD FOR ANYTHING!!!! Fuck, there it is. Im too old for anything. Ive missed my chance at everything and all thats left is to lurk in empty shadows, and eat the table scraps of the young and hip. Maybe write a book filled with angst poetry. Darren the writer? Sound suspiciously like Dead in the water! Fuck. I risk my whole life on a whim! A fucking fleeting feeling that perhaps wasnt even real. Ah yes but what was real and necessary was to fold up the life I was living. A kind of half existence where retirement was the goal not the back up plan. One foot in the grave, the other in mud. If a computer isnt working, you reboot it. If its still not working after youve done everything you can to fix it, you reformat it. It feels like thats what Ive done with my life. Ive tried rebooting and massaging it back to health though in the end, what it really needed was a good old fashioned reformat. Fucking re-install the operating system baby!! Oh and maybe put in a new one! This HAD to happen! Totally HAD to happen! Otherwise where did I have to go? This is, for better or for worse, telling me who I am. Oh and as usual for worse. It is an odd thing. Always with that annoying quiver of fear eh? It is not my karma in this lifetime to get to the root of my pain but to find creative ways to cover it up. Thats what it seems anyways. Because whatever dents Ive put into what ails me have not seemed to have an impact on the wellspring from which the pain flows. Not sure if Ive got a bigger wellspring of pain than everybody else on the planet or that Im just really lame at covering it up. Or maybe cause Im consciously trying to navigate through it. And of course that pain is going to look and feel huge when I am poking around in it! Maybe do something somewhat hedonistic to take the edge off it
Freedom?
June17th 2013SouthAmericamaybeBolivia
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Love?
June26th, 2011 Damn!I wishI wouldhavewrittendownwhereI wrotethis stuff! MaybeBoliviastill??
I want something that makes me feel deliriously good and I want to own it, possess it and hide it away from the world so no one will steal it. And hoard over it jealously and milk it to make myself feel good. My Precious!!! WHAT IS THAT???!!!! What is the antidote? What is the preventative medicine? Curl up in a ball and hide under a rock? Sadly this is perhaps the only way to protect myself from being hurt. And even then not! I will try to write my way through this. Fuck - I just got a sense of how cold love is for me. So cold and complicated. With love comes jealousy and a head full of worst case scenarios and they come with any little action that might suggest that the heart of who Im liking lies elsewhere away from me. WTF? What a losing game this love feels like. Either live like a monk and risk nothing or open my heart and the flood gates to all the horrible, dark feelings that come with it. I admire anyone who refuses to shut their heart and dives into all the shitty feelings that come along with that love. I dont want to be a monk and I dont want to shut my heart and I dont want to feel all the horrible shit whenever I feel like Im in love. This is the challenge I face. Or is what Im chasing after even love? Maybe its just a classic celestial diversion. If so its a cruel one! Yet any alternative form of love feels like not enough. So I guess the search continues. What is love right now? What would it have me do when Im feeling that intense feeling I think of as love? Would it make me walk away? Short term pain relief? Or would it want me to feel this. Feel what Ive witnessed others feel towards me. And were remarkably poised about. Some karma being returned to me. Breaking my heart open.
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PinchMe
July 12th, 2011 Sucre,Boliviaha!!
My big heart opening happened in a taxi cab on the way to Sucre. Piled in with my three amigos, something hit me like a tidal wave. Not sure what triggered it the joy of riding in style the 187 kilometres to Sucre in a taxi instead of a dodgy bus or the fact that the taxi driver was playing Spanish covers of 80s love songs! I dont know. All I know is that as I was sitting there in the front seat of the taxi, listening to Spanish versions of Love Hurts, Total Eclipse of the Heart, Unchained Melody, and many many more and watching the beautiful scenery flow past my window, and my good friends in the seat behind me my heart just started opening. Im not sure how else to explain it. It was a physical sensation. It was like there was something really pleasant pushing from inside the middle of my chest wanting to get out. Tripping over itself to get out. Insisting. It was overwhelming. I couldnt catch my breath or stop the tears from leaking out. And believe me I tried! I didnt want to freak out the taxi driver. Though he was the one who put on the cheesy love songs!? Of course as I was feeling it, I couldnt just sit there and feeling it. I had to figure it out! What was this about? I think it was everything coming together. Feeling of belonging, reconnecting with Jen and a deeper understanding of the nature of her love for me. And a painful realization that for a very long time, I stopped risking fully opening my heart. And along with that, having my wish to scream my wish to live life to the fullest had been reduced to a yawn. My vitality trapped behind my lack of courage. Would someone PLEASE pinch me? God, please pinch me, I dont want to sleep walk through life. Please someone! Well I got pinched. More than once in the last while. The first was during my first skype conversation with Jen in a few months. To get to the heart of it I witnessed on my Skype screen, this beautiful woman who I have known for five years and shared six amazing months with as a couple, instead of closing down with anger and shutting me out because of what had happened over the last few months, she instead exposes me to her deepest pain. She shows me how hurt she is with her tears. It touches me deeply. It hits me that I am witnessing what a wide open heart looks like. It hits me very deep. My heart remembered when I allowed myself to feel this deeply and embraces her in her pain. A pain caused partly by my heart not willing to risk feeling the depth of pain I am witnessing before me. I am filled with regret for choosing to not risk feeling. To not risk being hurt.
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Angstin Cusco
August10th, 2011 Cusco,PeruTwofor two!!
Okay so here I am in Cusco a spiritual place only Im not feeling so spiritual. In fact Im feeling pretty flat. Im alone and not liking it one bit after the month I had in Sucre, which was perhaps the best of my life. Im prickly not wanting to connect with anyone. What up dude? I have exactly 20 days left. What am i doing??? AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!! I just ordered a Pisco Sour. WTF? I dont even drink and its happy hour so Im getting two of them!! Yeah After a month and a bit of wonderment in Sucre I am flailing here. Not sure what to do next. Went searching for a Shaman today to see about doing San Pedro but it all just sketched me out. Felt like a bit of a scam the whole works. Like the metal readers at the fair in Sucre. Not sure how much I want this because it doesnt feel legit. I just sent a message to the most legit sounding company that does San Pedro experiences. I hope they get back to me. If not I may do Saturday with the two Swiss chicks with the shamanic dude up the hill. Do I really want to do this? To what end? What do I hope to gain from this? Am I really going in the right direction here? I am totally questioning that. It feels so self-indulgent. Very tantric. Very almost hedonistic except Im not having that much fun at it. Starting to wonder at the meaning of my life again. Fuck!!! It wasnt supposed to feel like this at this stage. My angst free days in Sucre seems to have created a bit of a creative block!! Who knew that being happy would be the demise of my ability to express myself! Fuck! Bring on the angst! Plus it was hard to read Brennans work. So much deeper and real than my own. Kinda took the wind out of my sails. :( How do I get back on the wagon? I guess I could just write about my travel experience? What Ive been doing since Sucre? Yeah, why dont I go there? Last days of Sucre, Isle Del Sol, Machu Picchu, Sick, and San Pedro And I would like to write a bit about Why I Write. Maybe I will do that here? Por que no? :)
WhyI Write
August10th, 2011 Cusco,Peru
There is a reason why I am doing this why I bleed in front of people with my words. It all goes back over a decade to the early weeks when I was recovering from my spleen injury. I remember
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