Yes I am BACK in South America. It is all as I warned per my last post, I suppose.
This time I have returned with lots of ideas, but no set plan. I only know how much I loved it here the first time and how happily I fell into the rhythm and the flow of backpack travel, despite some strong pre-trip trepidation. Opportunities for open-ended, make-it-up-as-you-go, commitment-free travel don’t come around often, and having experienced it once I now appreciate what an important luxury it is. Back home in NYC, I developed a strong addiction to rooting out and following the blogs of chronic or closeted world travelers who wrote extremely well about why they loved to travel or longed to. These fed my urge for more and also made me feel a little bit less crazy. Blogs with descriptive names like www.stopleadingaboringlife.com , www.travelingsavage.com, www.nomadichick.com , and www.liveafearlesslife.com were both inspiring and vindicating. No, t'was true there was no real reason I had to stop traveling just yet. While I wasn’t brave enough to sell everything I owned in exchange for the open road, I did actively shirk the overtures of headhunters in favor of a 1-way ticket back to South America.
So YES I AM BACK FOR MORE LIFE EXPERIENCES AND ADVENTURE which I hope to record and do justice to here. First stop Ecuador. Hurraaaayyyy!!
LOVE,
me
Friday, February 5, 2010
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Home
Back home now 4 days. Srule and Esther proved their undying love by coming to fetch me from JFK at the crack of dawn on what happened to also be Christmas Day. I don't know that I could've handled coming home without knowing they'd be waiting with such open, happy arms and eagerness to see me at the other end. And a coat. Ahh right - in NYC, December is quite cold!!
Being here amidst my things and my life, everything feels both comfortably and scarily familiar. It was fun to walk into my apartment and realize with fresh eyes how cozy and full of pretty non-hostel-like character it is! It was also unexpectedly reassuring to discover how naturally like home my home actually felt. As happy as I was to be traveling all of this time without a thought for the things I'd left behind, it was still pretty nice to see them again. Even NYC with its crazy city buzz has felt welcoming to me somehow - this being perhaps a nice perk of returning during the holiday season..?
The scary part of all this warm familiarity is knowing how easy it will be to pick up exactly where I left off - how quickly that "as if I never left" feeling sets in when you return home. It worries me to think that all the things I saw and did during what seemed like such a luxurious stretch of time before I left in early October, will become just part of a nice story I get to tell (to whoever is willing to listen) in a matter of moments. How can 2 1/2 months of life-changing adventure transmogrify into nothing but a blip?!!
And yet I really hope it doesn't. I really hope that this time, having opened myself up through travel in a way I never had before, I will internalize some of what I've learned, about the endless possibility of beauty and my own capacity for wonder. About remembering how to be wide eyed in the world, and the opportunity this affords to rediscover your sense of self and what you have to give, which is really one of the best things about travel, I find ... how it inspires and excites you to want to be your best self.
Or, as the quote from Kent Nerburn more precisely puts it:
So I come home with the hope that I can keep pursuing that "edge" even as I settle back into a life of routine full of family and friends and a dog that I love. Oh yes, and work. Routine itself is not inherently evil or bad, I just have to find the one that is right for me. This trip has given me renewed enthusiasm for figuring out what that is, and also some clarity as to what that might be. Knowing too that continuing to travel as much as I can in life will be a big part of it. Hey, this blog may very well become a series!
Till then... I wish everyone a happy, full-of-blessings New Year!
Love,
Karen
Being here amidst my things and my life, everything feels both comfortably and scarily familiar. It was fun to walk into my apartment and realize with fresh eyes how cozy and full of pretty non-hostel-like character it is! It was also unexpectedly reassuring to discover how naturally like home my home actually felt. As happy as I was to be traveling all of this time without a thought for the things I'd left behind, it was still pretty nice to see them again. Even NYC with its crazy city buzz has felt welcoming to me somehow - this being perhaps a nice perk of returning during the holiday season..?
The scary part of all this warm familiarity is knowing how easy it will be to pick up exactly where I left off - how quickly that "as if I never left" feeling sets in when you return home. It worries me to think that all the things I saw and did during what seemed like such a luxurious stretch of time before I left in early October, will become just part of a nice story I get to tell (to whoever is willing to listen) in a matter of moments. How can 2 1/2 months of life-changing adventure transmogrify into nothing but a blip?!!
And yet I really hope it doesn't. I really hope that this time, having opened myself up through travel in a way I never had before, I will internalize some of what I've learned, about the endless possibility of beauty and my own capacity for wonder. About remembering how to be wide eyed in the world, and the opportunity this affords to rediscover your sense of self and what you have to give, which is really one of the best things about travel, I find ... how it inspires and excites you to want to be your best self.
Or, as the quote from Kent Nerburn more precisely puts it:
“This is why we need to travel. If we don’t offer ourselves to the unknown, our senses dull... The edge is off our experience, and we pass our days in a routine that is both comfortable and limiting. We wake up one day and find that we have lost our dreams in order to protect our days.”
So I come home with the hope that I can keep pursuing that "edge" even as I settle back into a life of routine full of family and friends and a dog that I love. Oh yes, and work. Routine itself is not inherently evil or bad, I just have to find the one that is right for me. This trip has given me renewed enthusiasm for figuring out what that is, and also some clarity as to what that might be. Knowing too that continuing to travel as much as I can in life will be a big part of it. Hey, this blog may very well become a series!
Till then... I wish everyone a happy, full-of-blessings New Year!
Love,
Karen