Waking up in my own bed at 4 am this morning and hearing rain on the roof was comforting as the cat and I snuggled under the duvet, but at the same time a wave of sadness swept over me.
My traveling adventure of the last month to Canada and the USA is over, and life on Monday will return to normal as I currently know it. I will be back terrorizing the peak hour traffic of Christchurch on my orange scooter as I make my way to the office, driving my work mates mad with my exaggerated tales and warpt sense of humour - and still losing stuff I expect. It feels kind of empty at the moment because I haven’t got a plan of where I want to head next, and over the last month as I have experienced the sense of freedom and adventure that comes with traveling, I have also been able to do lots of thinking about the things that fill my bucket up with ideas and inspiration. On reflection I realise the levels in that bucket had gotten dangerously low before I left .For some time I have been just going through the motions of just going to work, paying the mortgage, being everything to everybody, and being pleased that I wasn’t featuring on the back page of the paper , taking a ride in a grey car in a wooden overcoat.
We are all just faking it till we make it and the month away has reinforced to me how important the things I am passionate about need to feature in my daily life to keep that bucket topped up. Its people that I love really, the interactions with them, their stories and personal journeys and the sense of fulfillment that comes from me being able to share those moments. The ability to be able to relive those moments again as I write about them, and in many cases share them with the people who follow my travels and sometimes harem scarem adventures is not only a gift I treasure but something so necessary to how I function. Writing is how I understand what has happened, how I make sense of it all and how I get to move on, from the awesome experiences, the wonderful people I meet and from the shit also. Its what lights my fire and allows me to really feel for whatever brief time it generally takes.
I have had an 18-month hiatus from my writing until putting that backpack on again recently and going traveling. The fire in my belly reignited when I got back to the keyboard, and started sharing my travels and thoughts again. You see, that’s one of the things that feeds my soul, allows me to enjoy my own self-deprecating sense of humour, and to enter someone else’s world for a brief time. I write for me - if you as a reader can take something from my passion then I guess that is a plus, if not how lucky am I to be able to vent in such a way and move forward, heal and grow whilst indulging my passion.
I have gathered enough material on my travels to fuel the fire for a bit, and so will continue until that runs out as I reflect on the last 30 days, spout useless information and remind myself of how fun life can be if you step up and embrace the opportunity’s you have. If you have followed my travels from afar, thank you from the bottom of my heart. I feel privileged to be able to share places that some people never get to see, to enjoy engagement with people from all over the world and ability to share my experiences with my friends and people I have met along the way.
To those people I have written personally about and those I am yet to, thank you for impacting my life in some way when our paths crossed and allowing me to share some words publicly about yours.
In the words of Cyril Connolly –“Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self”.
