12.1.10

And now for something completely different...


Well, I've finally caved and joined the rest of the world. You see, I like to think of myself as a Luddite-by-choice. I don't use twitter and I know only the most basic applications of my electronic appliances. However, I've been traveling and veganing together for over a year now, and I for one, think the two are fascinating, especially when taken together.

And as it happens, I started this thing just in time for a major change in my traveling plans. I have yet to decide how explicit to be in this blog, but as no one yet knows of it perhaps I can let my imaginary readers in on my personal life. You see, there was this boy... A one-night stand in Istanbul turned into a few weeks of hitchhiking around Turkey together, parting with the possibility of traveling together again. Which we did, four months later across the world in SE Asia. I traveled to Thailand to see his blond head lying on a stretcher/bed in a crowded hospital and we spent a few brief weeks together before he decided he did not in fact want to travel with me. Fair enough. But still, ouch.

I felt I had been punched in the stomach. Suddenly, I went from knowing, roughly, my plans for the next month or more to being unsure of where to go and what to do the next day.

So I asked myself, what next? Surely the easiest thing would be to visit a fellow world traveler just one country over and hook up with him. But I couldn't shake the notion that this parting of ways was Nature's way of telling me to push myself. I had been too comfortable with the boy; traveling together was simply too easy. Maybe this was my chance to really push myself again, to feel adrenaline pumping through my veins yet again.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood.

And so, faced with an easy option and one which made me feel as if a hand had reached inside me and was gripping my lower intestines, I chose fear over comfort.