Tag Archives: essays

On a year of adulting

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Does a Year in Review post belong here in my travel blog, or in the more serious collection of essays and other writings I post on Medium?

I dunno. So, here is an excerpt of my year-in-review post: On a Year of Adulting.

>>>>Adulting: I’m not sure when it happens; I mean, when it happens for real, that point at which you accept the Fates and appear for duty. Adulting, for sure, is a process… an incremental accretion of roles and responsibilities and experiences and been-there-done-thats, landing us at what…Our 15th anniversary of the 35th lap around the sun?

Truth be told, I don’t feel exponentially different than I did at 35. Sure, the joints are creakier and I’ve turned into quite the pumpkin by midnight on any given day. My tolerance for time-wasters has dwindled to next to nothing (tho maybe that’s not a new phenomena). And to those pesky little indications that biology is, in fact, in control: my inner idiot tells me you are immune to all of it, the graying, the wrinkling, the weakening, the widening (respectively: unkind, unprovoked, unimpressed, uninterested). Yet the calendar reminds us that it’s coming, and that we have accumulated these learnings and experiences; we’ve absorbed these bits of wisdom to carry with us to the next page on the calendar (or fling into the sea, if that better suits).

So, what of this year in review business? 2018 remained a continuation of 2017 and its inconceivable surreality. #MeToo left me battling some of my own demons, summoning parts of my past long-shovelled over; dragons I thought I’d long ago slain. I wrote this.<<<

CLICK HERE FOR THE REST OF THE STORY: Goals and regrets, adventures and achievements and travels and near misses…

Writing while not travelling

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I write nearly daily. Sometimes the ramblings are mere crap flung on a page, to unstop a dam and let the quality words out to play. Hopefully. [some of the less-crappy bits are HERE, if you’re curious]

Case in point: I finished this today, a mélange of exasperation, daydreaming and misfit ranting. I’m not sure I like it as much as other things I’ve penned, but the words badly wanted out and I like it enough.

The more I travel, the more I want to see and hear and learn and experience. The more I become a member of a larger sphere of experience and citizenship, the less I feel beholden or attached to this small (and shrinking) one from which I hail. This citizen of the world thing has merit: belonging is a mindset.

And if belonging is a mindset, I need to wonder whether one belongs because they strive to fit a mold. Or: if belonging is an effortless thing, where once you find that place, you won’t want to ever leave, will I find it? Have I already?

And does it become a place to leave once you’re there?

As part of my inquiry, I’ve been writing (much crap flung in the process) about our capability to take things for granted, about the meaning of true friends, about being fromless, about the insecurities of living in a really weird time.

And as I write, I read…in doing so, I stumble across inspiration for the next adventure (and the one after that); in the process, procrastinating by plotting points on a map or two (or 6) and planning the first leg of the next holiday.

Some of the best books read in the past few months (travel, fiction, fantasy that approximates our absurd reality…). Africa, Pakistan, Eastern Europe, Discworld:

2018-07-07 16.04.26Glorious Sundays such as today are meant for forest bathing. And so I go, to break in the new hiking boots, to contemplate my place amidst the trees and forest critters, to indulge my aging pup, to visit my secret cache of wild blueberries, to breathe in the mossy air in hopes of dislodging stagnant words…

I don’t know why, but this made me think of a brilliant Soul Asylum song:

Surya namaskar

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Yoga Sutra 1.1: atha yoga anushasanam. Now the practice of yoga begins.

Yoga, quite literally, is a path. It’s a culmination, or compilation, of the different pieces of a practice: movement, breath, study, concentration, contemplation, stillness, restraint, observation, meditation, presence, authenticity…

desert-backbend1This practice wends its way through my life, showing up at different levels, in different ways, each and every day. Some days, I’m cultivating iccha, where the heart seeks to understand this turbulent and harrowing world in which we live, drawing the willingness to allow what might come. Other days, I’m learning; utilising jnana energy, gleaning whatever wisdom I can from books/from others/from the natural world, that helps me sometimes just get out of bed in the morning. Other days, the light bulbs flash: I discover a missing piece of a puzzle; some explanation for that thing that’s been tugging at my subconscious. There are the kriya days, where 1+2=37, because I feel I can do anything I’ve got the will and knowledge to accomplish, and I’ve put the pieces together to take action. Other days, that action is merely a walk around the block to clear my head of the numbing self-deprecating thoughts.

It’s International Day of Yoga. It’s the summer solstice. And so I continue on this path of yoga, making way for a citta vrtti-less* morning, a bright sun slicing through the cotton-puffed sky at the beginning of its arc across the longest day, saluting my endeavours as I salute its.

Happy solstice!

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*Yoga Sutra 1.2: yogas citta vrtti nirodhah; yoga calms the fluctuations of the mind-stuffs.

 

Tropical quickie.

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Tropical ramblings on a Friday before a long weekend…

I woke up early this morn, half-dreaming of a place with palm trees and teeming reefs, half-real, half-fading in my morning haze.

I walked by the water a little later, the sea a bit less ultramarine here, contemplating the green-ness of late May, seeming late this year; I listened to the mockingbirds and blue jays and the distant knocking of woodpeckers. I made tea from ingredients I’ve collected from faraway spice markets.

I’m working from home today, listening to Zulu music between meetings while my dog’s snoring keeps time with the beat.

It’s a weird and wonderful world out there, all these places whispering their invitations to go exploring. Today, I’m collecting that feeling and brewing it, like a magic tea of sorts, to glean inspiration and motivation.

#HappyFriday

[more on the Seychelles] [more on Medium]

On sister-friends and dork-shaming

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Sometimes my travels cross-pollinate and spark essays…

As I write this, I’m on a plane pointed towards South Florida, where my best college friend, and the closest thing I know to a sister, lives; her youngest daughter graduates High School this weekend. It’s a mind-bending thought that we met when we were her age, and now we’re here, sending her off to flourish, and to wreak her fabulous self on the wild and woolly world at large. As we did.

[Click Here to read the rest of this essay on Medium]