Amygdala Ballet

The first phase of a long-term traveller's mentality is unphilosophical. Being away for what seems like forever doesn`t seem real yet, so for now you just live like you're on holiday. It's only after about a month or so that a questioning phase begins. Holidays are defined by their brevity; a break from the norm, but what if that became the norm? It's an odd transitional phenomenon, but a pivotal point in the traveller's experience. Where is the apparently necessary dreariness in my life? Somehow life teaches you that it is not complete unless there is a degree of displeasure in doing something. Achievement is very important to me, but for now at least, experience seems to be a satisfactory substitute and besides there are plenty of less orthodox ways of feeling achievement while travelling.



Somewhere after the two month point you enter a new phase that can be thought of as the resolution of the search for justification and the acceptance of travelling as life, for as long as my mind can meaningfully grasp at least. When I think of what I've done in the last two months it seems futile to think of going home, being that I have five times what has gone left to come. I'm not saying that I don't think of people at home because I really do and I'm not sure how well I would cope without the grounding rock of reassurance that the internet has become. All I mean is that I've rationalised the passage of time so I can accept this way of life as being the way things are for the considerable future and that is just fine with me. How am I ever going to go back to work? There is a school of thought that considered me lazy before I left! If I can be allowed to indulge the metaphor, I think that this year will be like the passage of a life in its own right; being thrown into the unknown, learning, experimentation, self-sufficiency, true experience, nostalgia, fighting the end.