Bodhi Bum

I have always sort of considered myself kinda special, to be plainly honest.  I think that probably.  Or rather completely.  Has something to do with the way my parents raised me within a family that eclipses all families in terms of love and morality and lessons and parenting 101.  My parents were the best.   My family was the best.  Hence, I knew I could stumble through life and expect the world to ensure my success and happiness.  And they did. And I was.  Successful.  And happy.

...

I just took read back through my first post on my blog (Mein Kampf), from October 2004. And to be honest it was a bit of a read. Excuse the title of the post.  It was my first time in Germany and I figured it would be witty to reference Hitler's autobiography title, since I was in Germany for the very first time.  Back then I was posting on a travel blog for only family and friends.  I was all new to this blogging thing.

To put it in context.  It was five, odd, years ago.  I had just come back from my first extended foray to South East Asia, was still wet behind the ears for the most part, and was more than slightly bruised and battered from the experience.  But reading back through that post, I can remember the feelings I had coursing through me as I poured those thoughts out through the keyboard.  How special it was just to be able to order room service.  How amazing it was to be back in civilization in clean sheets using free wireless internet, after having spent the last eight months bathing in random water buckets throughout north east Cambodia, and living a grungy backpacker life for so long.  It was all so new and exciting, and exhilarating to be living this new life of work and travel.

Mind you, I had been travelling for work for five years before that.  New York City for three years, living the Wall Street dream for a young kid straight out of Uni.  Front row center for September 11th.  My claim to fame there was that the front page story on the New York Times on Sep 15th showed a landing tire of the second plane sitting in front of the Burger King  on Trinity street, across the park from the second world trade center tower.  That's where I was standing.  As the second plane flew over my head.  And right before i bolted for the safety of the river.  Wasn't until four days late I got handed a copy of the times and saw exactly how close I got to becoming the ultimate road kill.  After that I took a work transfer to Australia not long after.  Lived an amazing 1.5 years there.

And then from there it all went slightly helter skelter.  I found my home in SEA.  I found that I had a penchant for self-destruction.  And SEA provided all the right ingredients.  But it also provided all the right ingredients for true happiness.  And a religion and way of life that provided the tools to find the means to find that true, ultimate happiness.

But my first blog, way back in October 2004, was after my year of discovery in SEA.  It was after all that had faded away.  After Australia.  After my great backpacking adventure and my lost eight months in Cambodia.  It was in a random town in Germany.  Back in civilization.  And on a random night, in a random city in Germany, in a random hotel.  I sat down with my first free company supplied laptop.  With my first free work expensed wireless internet connection. And I wrote my first blog.

And now I sit here almost five years later.  And I read back over that blog.  And I feel the old feelings that i felt that day coursing through my veins.  I feel the newness, and the excitement, and the optimism and hope for the future.  I feel the amazement that someone is willing to pay me to travel.  That someone is actually willing to pay me to travel the world and to live a life that I feel so deep in my bones that I feel it obscene to even ask accept my paycheck.

And I think of now.  And I think of my last post (Do I Stay or Do I Go).  A post that I typed out only yesterday.  Last night.  And I think of how I poured out my frustrations, and conflict, and torn emotions, onto my keyboard for all to read.  And how utterly different that entry, that day, that post, that person, was.  Is.  From who I was way back on that day in Germany when I felt so lucky, and fated, and the world was a gift waiting to be opened.  That the world was so, so, just so big.

Now that I've been around it a dozen plus times.  It's starting to feel real small.  And that makes me sad for some reason.

And so I try to reconcile the two posts.  My first and my latest.  I know inside I still am that person.  I haven't removed myself so permanently from that person that I can't slip back into his skin with the simple read of an old post.  It all comes rushing back over me with a simple read, so I'm back there in that old hotel room feeling life laid out before me.

With the fresh sense of those emotions still wet on my tongue, I have a bit of a fresh perspective on things right now.  I could feel life laid out before me back then.  And I still can today.  Now, today, five years on.  I look back on all the adventures I've had, and all the life I've lived.  And I know that I truly have lived adventures that most people could never contemplate.

But tomorrow.  Monday morning.  Going in to the office in a dusty industrial park on the outskirts of this boring city on the edge of the desert.  Just.  Doesn't.  Quite.  Feel.  Like a bloody adventure waiting to happen. If I had to estimate. I would say the chances of adventure occurring to me some time between the hours of 8:45am and 5:30pm, stuck in a boring consulting company that specializes in something slightly more risky than watching paint dry.  Is pretty much zero.

How did my life turn from living the dream and not quite believing that they are actually paying me to travel, and save up for my eventual early retirement...  To my present reality of convincing myself every day not to just kick the pointless office life and say feck it, and opt out for mega-early, and poor, retirement?

So I'm wondering how to recapture that sense of adventure.  That feeling that the world is laid out before you, and it's yours for the picking.

To be plainly honest.  I'm looking to recapture that misplaced invincibility of youth.  That feeling that the world is your oyster.  And it's there for your taking.  And that you deserve to take it.  That nothing bad will ever happen no matter what you do.

Fearless.  

God, how I miss being fearless

Bodhi