On Travel

Son is shining
>>>>>>>>Plane tickets and bags
>>>>>>>>>>>>>Voice mail is forgotten

I would likely feel slightly more comfortable now, I think, had my neck snapped completely sometime during the night. A clean break would have to be better than this. On the bright side, at least, I got no quality sleep at all. I can’t imagine what had disturbed me most; the cargo ship which had docked with a clang, and then was hastily – and loudly – unloaded outside of my room; the walls teeming with insects and the bare bulb hanging from the ceiling which I daren’t turn off for fear of attracting more of their kind. Maybe it was the steel bunk which was roughly a foot shorter than I (hence the crippling neck injury), or the rice mat offering me millimetre after millimeter of luxurious comfort. Or maybe, just maybe, it was the knowledge through all of this terrible night that I could have escaped it and spent the night in relative comfort for what back home would amount to the change in my pocket.

You could say that I am backpacking. If I still had my backpack. I lost that about eight months ago. I prefer to say that I am drifting. The freedom I once felt hauling around a 50 kilogram bag so long ago would likely seem like bondage to me now. But really, all that’s holding me back at the moment is the gnawing in my belly. It’s breakfast time on the Yangtze river, which means it’s time for me to find some very well boiled water. I can worry about putting my neck in traction after I have eaten.

Travelling can be a wonderful substitute for a purpose in life. It is the best of the alternate answers for the deadly question “what is your son up to now?” that parents of wayward children could ever hope to have. I imagine that on the dinner party circuit, my parents are far happier to explain that I am travelling through central China, rather than trying to sound positive about me burning out, losing my job, girlfriend and apartment and deciding to liquidate my retirement savings for an epic round of binge drinking. I think that might be a tad socially awkward.

Yes, travelling is the perfect alternative to ‘doing something’. If one cannot go places in life, far better to go places in the world. I firmly believe that as one who has taken a liberal arts degree, I am far more qualified to travel than I am to be an Insurance Broker. I was prepared for this. Cultural relativism, cross comparisons of political systems, history, geography; I know travelling and feel that I can make something of my experiences. Really, for all the attention it gets as the ideal focus for ones’ life, work comes as a great disappointment to anyone accustomed to thinking.

My travels have been the first time since I was in school that life seemed meaningful, exciting. The stimulation, the challenges and the newness of it all gives me a constant sense of invigoration which I found notably absent from my life in a cubicle. I was never prepared for working life, and I don’t know that I will ever be able to make an office my home.

But in the working world, far from being effective preparation and training, my education seemed like more of a cruel joke. Going to university is like believing in Santa Claus until you are 23 years old. So long as you believe, the fantasy is wonderful and the world seems a little magical. The disaster of finding out the truth leaves you embarrassed, confused, and more than a little pissed off at everyone around you for lying for so long.

Today I am one week shy of having travelled for a year. What started as an elaborate plan to kill myself off has turned into a genuine journey of self discovery. I think I may have even discovered enough of myself that I no longer feel nausea when I begin to feel like a cliché. I mean who discovers themselves any more? What, is this some kind of redemption story? I originally came to Asia to get drunk for cheap.