Emotional Outpourings and Future of the Blog
Saturday, May 17th, 2008As I sit here in my sister’s house surrounded by scenes of American surburbia, I find that the memories of my trip are beginning to fade as they always do. The tastes, smells, and sounds are starting to dull and are becoming harder to recall. It appears that I will remember my trip not in vivid memories and perfect recall but in flashes of familiarity brought on by what I encounter in daily life (a news story about China, a mountain view, or a movie filmed in New Zealand for example). This doesn’t bring on a feeling of depression that I thought I might encounter at the end of my trip. Rather it provides a bridge and helps to ease the transition between two very different lifestyles.
Now that I have been back in the US for two weeks, I have begun to look for a job and re-establish all the things needed for a “normal” life. I find that it is not as hard as I thought to make the jump back to my previous life. It just goes to show how adaptable humans are and how quickly the exotic becomes the norm. My trip ended at a good time. Towards the end I was the kid who ate too much candy and ended up with a stomache ache. Despite being surrounded by exotic locales and vistas, it was hard for me to feel any of the awe that I had at the start of my trip. My brain and body now needs time to absorb and deal with all that I have seen and been through. I am content for the time being to spend time with friends and family and reenter the workforce. The latter brought on as much by necessity as wanting to feel productive again. All that being said, I am once again starting to feeling a very small kernel of wanderlust. The roving lifestyle is once again beginning to look exotic and full of promises of new adventures. Who knows how long it will be before the calls from my backpack become too loud (Central Asia – the “Stans” fascinate me) to ignore and I feel the need to head out again. If I do, rest assured that I will do my best to document for anyone who wants to come along. In the meantime, check back with the blog every few months. As the trip is officially over, I will no longer do weekly updates, but plan to do updates if anything interesting happens in my life (like blog book deals, new big adventure about to begin, things like that). I still plan to do trips whenever work permits and they will definitely show up.
I will be in Indiana until May 21 attending tea parties, watching Sesame Street, playing My Little Pony and dollhouse, and all the other things men submit to when confronted with a bright smiling three year old face. These activities will occasionally be broken up with bouts of bug hunting and being used as a private jet (I like to think of myself as a tough fighter plane to make up for the My Little Pony sessions) for flights around the house. I will then go to Oregon for a week to visit other family, and return to Louisiana on May 28.
cjun