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416 days…

Thursday, October 1st, 2009

Right now I’m in Denver airport, drinking a beer and waiting for my connecting flight to Kansas City.  This is the 25th day I’ve spent in airports and airplanes on this trip, it’s also the last.  Today, for all intensive purposes marks the end of this journey.  I’ll be in Ks City for a couple days, staying with my cousins before driving to Iowa with my mom this weekend.  I’ve been gone 416 days in total, that’s 9,984 hours.  After my flights today, I’ll have been in the air for 120 of those hours, that’s 5 entire days spent on airplanes and god knows how much more in airports.

 

I looked at my calendar and noticed that exactly one year ago today I was in Osaka, Japan.  It was my last day in Japan, concluding my stay in one of my favourite countries of the trip, before my flight to South Korea.  What really gets me is this seems like a lifetime ago.  And if one year seems like a lifetime, I’m imagining what I can do/see in my actual lifetime.  The sky’s the limit (or is it? ;) ).

 

In the immediate future though I have to turn my energy and focus from travel to more mundane things, like rejoining society (I don’t even have a phone, and I’m only going to get one half heartedly).  Things like getting a job, an apartment, re-opening my guitar cases and kick starting my musical endeavors, though that last item isn’t really in the mundane category.  I don’t think I realized it when I set off on this journey, though it didn’t take me long to realize it, but there was no going back once I started, I could only forward from that point.  So even though I’m on the brink of finishing and returning to the place that I set out from 14 months ago in Iowa, I’m not anticipating going back to what it was before (even if this was possible, it’s not), instead I’m looking ahead to the future.  The next year or two mostly, still don’t have much of a clue what the hell I’m going to be doing in the long term and you know what?  I like it better that way.  Right before I departed on the trip, a friend told me he hoped I found what I was looking for on the trip.  To be honest I had no idea what I was looking for, so I can’t really say I found it.  One thing I do know though, I’m on the path and closer to finding whatever it is I’m looking for than when I left, no question.

 

Here’s my grand summary.  If this were a book I think the title would be:  14 months, 6 continents, $30k, endless experiences. How to empty a bank account in a year and not regret it.  Many people cannot grasp the concept of spending all of your money on such a, they would say, frivolous, activity as globetrotting, I know such people.  I reject this opinion, and my response to this is, that the experience of the trip, the things I’ve seen, the ideas that have come out the trip, how I myself have changed are all priceless and I am 100% serious in saying I do not regret in the slightest spending all the money.  Money is just a means to an end, and they print more every day.  I don’t buy into the bullshit godly status that it holds in most peoples lives.  Mostly though, I don’t care if people think my trip has been a waste of money.  I know it wasn’t and that’s enough for me.

 

That’s enough for this entry, I’m getting too philosophical here.  I’m in a positive frame of mind finishing this trip, looking straight ahead in anticipation of what’s next.  I just have to survive this winter first…