I sometimes complain to a friend that I am having a hard time writing.
“Just write,” she always shoots back. “Just write, even if you don’t feel like it.”
The problem is, I hardly ever do something if I don’t feel like it. I think it’s a character flaw.
I was prepared, more or less, to give up on this blog a month ago. Maybe even stop bothering to write, even though it gives me satisfaction as much as it feels like shitting bricks sometimes.
Then I was sick throughout most of December. In fact, I got so sick that I would up in the hospital in Quetzaltenango overnight, and then flew back to Canada a few days later since I wasn’t feeling any better. (Hey, I’m Canadian and can get free health care at home… so sue me.) Spent another night in the hospital as soon as my plane landed, then spent the next two weeks recovering.
Fuck you kidneys, fuck you.
Anyways, I’m better now, more or less, and am heading back to Guatemala on Saturday.
Now, I certainly can’t say that my life was ever in mortal danger. It wasn’t that serious, after all. Still, I was pretty darn sick – sicker than I’d ever felt before in my life. Shaking violently on the bathroom floor sick.
For a melodramatic hypochondriac like myself, this can’t help but remind me of my own mortality. No, not in the “am I going to die” kind of way. I’m not that melodramatic. But a reminder that life might not always go so smooth… I might not always be able to float around as easily as I do now. What if I get sick again, and it turns out that I can’t have the travel lifestyle that I enjoy so much? It probably won’t happen, but it could. (Kidneys, don’t you even think about it.)
While I’m doing this – traveling, doing interesting things, enjoying myself in exciting new places – I really should document it. For myself, mostly. For the part of myself that is always writing paragraphs in my head but not writing them down. For those friends that like to keep track of me, sure… but really it’s to stick with this gut feeling that I should write. Perhaps it will someday make a mark, perhaps not. That doesn’t really matter.
My New Year’s resolution last year was to “eat more fast food. Faster.”
Maybe this year I should step it up a knotch, listen to my friend and “just write.”
More soon.
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