Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Just so you know...

I'm still totally freaking out.



Everyone keeps asking me what I'm doing next, and I have an answer... "I'm going to head up towards Chiang Mai, then visit Laos & Vietnam before flying back to the states." but the fact is, I don't have a single hostel booked, I have made no idea when the bus leaves for Chiang Mai or from which station. I have some vague plans of visiting an island before I start traveling in earnest but I still don't have a clue which island to visit. And this is all the easy fun stuff!!




I don't even know when I'm checking out of my apartment. I gave my landlady a vague wave at the calendar indicating the first or second week of October, and she seemed more or less okay with that. Or possibly she was cussing me out for my indecision in words I have no hope of understanding.





I'm not looking forward to YET AGAIN going through every item in my apartment and determining it's value to me in the long and short terms, evaluating whether it will be thrown out, mailed to the States, packed up to be stored for six weeks, or dragged along with me through three countries. Every time I lug my laptop around in my backpack I tell myself there's no way I could deal with traveling with it. Every time I think about leaving my laptop behind for six weeks I break into a panic - there's no way I could survive without unlimited access to the internet!



Once I leave this apartment I'll be living out of some combination of suitcases for like.... indefinitely, with a bare minimum of two months. The nomadic lifestyle does NOT appeal to me. All the declutterers of the world tell you that getting rid of your stuff frees you. But it's not true. Or rather, it's only true to a point. No, you probably don't need twice as many TVs as the number of people in your household, nor do you need the keychain some extended cousin gave you for your 15th birthday just because it reminds you of that one time you went rollerskating together. But as humans, we need stuff. We don't have fur or claws or shells... we can't go naked through the world. We have big brains & nimble hands. We make stuff and we use that stuff to create the environments in which we live.... this is what humans do. Take away my stuff and you're taking away my world.


OK - perhaps I'm being slightly melodramatic here. But seriously... I hate this part, I really hate this part. Anyone want to come over and help me?





TAG: Code Fish Sauce

3 comments:

Bezzie said...

I don't know, my husband's pretty furry...hee hee!

But I'm positive that you'll be on your merry way and won't remember why you were stressing. (Ok, you probably will...but you'll be over it!)

Missamite said...

You had the strength to clear out your apartment, quit your job and say goodbye to your friends for who knows how long. Go have fun already.

Rebel said...

To the both of you - Just because I did it once doesn't mean it's not stressful anymore.

I would like nothing more than to 'just go have fun' but honestly it would be a whole lot more fun, and significantly less stressful if I had a couple of friends to go with.