Balance

Balance. It is something I've struggled with my whole life. I’m pretty much a balls out or nothing kind of person. In my adolescence I did drugs. When I say I did drugs, I mean I did almost every drug there was. I ended up a junkie. I saw that my friends who were shooting up were having a better high than I was and I didn't want to miss out on a more intense experience. And let me tell you that shooting up is right up there as one of the top two intense experiences in my life. (For the record, I quit powdered drugs when I was 18, went to rehab and never looked back). That is just one example of the many examples I have in my life of me going as far as I can with something. 

When I do something I have a hard time doing it halfway. I like to experience things intensely…passionately.  I like to dive in to whatever experience I am having and be fully immersed in it. I like to push my limits.

Currently I am seized with a terrible case of wanderlust. I am itching to take off and go as far away as possible. As luck would have it I have a friend who is similarly struck with the need to get out of Dodge, so we are embarking on a trip to Thailand for three weeks in January. This is exciting. Very exciting. Traveling with a friend feels much more independent than traveling with a significant other. The problem is that I don’t want to come back. I want to just go and and keep going for a year or three. I want to say goodbye to my cubicle world, corporate bullshit. I want to say goodbye to all of my stuff that does not fit into my backpack. I want to say goodbye to my mortgage payment, car payment, student loans, and responsibilities. I want to be a vagabond and travel around working enough to afford to keep traveling. I want every day to be an adventure and every day to be surrounded by beauty.

Will the three weeks away be enough to sate my desire? Or will I come back and experience a crash once I have to re-enter the real world? I am used to such crashes and I am not a fan.
I know that staying abroad isn't something I am capable of doing right now. I have responsibilities and commitments. There are people I would miss terribly.

But it is so very tempting to unplug myself from the machine. To be completely free.

Maybe my five year plan should be to become debt free, get rid of most of my stuff and then do it. That would mean a serious change in my lifestyle because between by student loans and my parent loans for my son’s college, I owe quite a bit. But it’s doable if I cut out extraneous spending/travel/eating out, if I can learn to discipline myself (not an easy feat).  Or even if I don’t leave to live overseas I could leave corporate America and find someplace to live with more nature and less stress. A place where I am not too far and can still see the people I love and maybe travel now and again if I live simply.

Something to ponder…..



Comments

  1. KyleNovember 4, 2014 at 7:28 PM

    I'm really glad you're getting some time to get away from all of this in January. A vacation like that has a great potential for being transformative. I know you'll make the most of it :-)

    ReplyDelete

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