And back to life, I suppose. We’re such routine animals, it’s bordering on ridiculous. Humans love their routine. Every break from it we get we immediately start to adjust to a new routine. Two weeks on a business trip to Athens meant a huge break from my normal routine and I just developed a new one, which now strikes me as unreal.
Living in a hotel for two weeks and have all meals paid for you is quite an exceptional situation. At the same time you end up falling into a new trot that somehow has nothing to do with your normal day-to-day living back home, wherever that is.
When I woke up yesterday, feeling excruciatingly tired, I seriously had to wonder what the capital F I was doing. I’ve not signed my new contract, nothing is actually confirmed yet and there’s a part of me that wants to just run away and go somewhere else. Follow my heart’s desire.
I swear to you I’ve been reading too many fantastic and fantastical books. My heart’s desire is neither staying in London nor taking on this new contract. Not taking the job would be foolish, however, and a fool I am not.
Still, if I wake up and my first thought is: ugh! then there’s something not right and I do listen to myself every now and then.
It doesn’t help that I’m exhausted and suffering from a weird kind of culture shock. Hence the title “back to reality”. The last two weeks don’t feel real to me. I stepped out of my normal life, did something completely different for an indefinable amount of time, mainly because it was a nominal eleven days that felt like a month, and now I am back inside my reality, which feels strange and doesn’t seem to fit anymore.
I’ve grown three sizes, figuratively, not literally. I actually lost weight, but that’s a different issue.
Travel changes you. Every journey you undertake changes you. There’s no escaping it. And if it doesn’t change you then you weren’t there. You didn’t do it. You closed yourself off to everything to every part of it and might as well not have left.
11 days away I return changed.
You’d think eleven days is not enough to have an effect on you, but you err. It’s plenty of time. An hour can have a profound impact, positive as well as negative. Eleven days is more than enough to turn you upside down, inside out and spit you out in such a way that you don’t know your mirror image anymore.
I suppose that struck me the most yesterday morning. My next thought involved a rather massive cleanout, because being away for that time I found that a lot of the stuff I currently own, I actually don’t need.
Once I don’t feel so bone tired anymore, I shall get started on that.
Then I have to figure out what I am doing for the next twelve months. My career took a turn, but my travel plans remain set.
I want to live on a houseboat and I want to spend my spare time writing. I could get both, but at a price. I may be able to live by myself, which would be ideal, but not central.
Decisions, decisions. I am not sure I’m in the right mindset, though. Especially when I dread returning to the office tomorrow.
Back to reality. But will it be my life still?
Why does this feel as I have to make an agonizing decision? Am I being overly dramatic? All I want to do is write. What is wrong with that? Why does there never seem to be enough time? Why do I feel the need to steal the time?
Back to life. That’s where I need to be. Who cares about reality?
2clouds 