Soooooooo… am working on moving this travel blog to a new website/domain. Changes should be done in the next week, pending yet another change of heart.

“Someone once said that moving is the closest thing there is to freedom.”

Is that why we travel?

An update is in order. You may have notice that my recent posts have been pretty all over the place and not remotely chronological. This is because I am not traveling at the moment. I doubt there any many people who’d be interested in tales of sitting at home with the dog in my parent’s house in suburbia. Instead, I am writing travel stories as I remember them. If you’re confused, go to the archives for some sort of organization.

I am in Edmonton, Alberta. This is the city I went to high school, but I haven’t lived here for 8 years so it doesn’t feel like home anymore. My friends in Ottawa and Toronto moaned: why don’t you stay here and work instead?

I said: “In Ottawa and Toronto I have you guys, and hanging out with friends all the time costs money.”

Being antisocial – hanging out at home with the dog – is a real money-saver. Not to mention I don’t have to pay rent here.

This is only a temporary move. (Don’t tell my boss that.) I came back from Mexico very, very broke. I needed money, so I decided to work and save money for a bit.

I’m working at a cafe. On one hand, it’s kind of depressing to work at the same kind of place I worked before getting a BA and MA. On the other hand, I actually like working in a cafe. It’s nice honest work: you go, work hard, talk to people and then go home. I’ll feel bad for leaving the job after only working a little while because I really like the owners, but I’m trying to make up for my inevitable douchebagginess by working especially hard now.

I’m exhausted though. I’ve realized that I haven’t had a job that involved any real work for a long time. You know, like real work where you’re actually moving around and doing things for 8 hours straight. It’s exhausting when you’ve just been sitting on your ass doing “thinking” work for the past few years.

What’s next? Here are the serious options. Next week I will find out if I have an excellent 8-10 month paid internship in Bolivia. This is my top choice because it really is ideal for me – combines education and development. If I get this job, I’ll be leaving for La Paz in a month or two. If I don’t get that job, I will look for good teaching jobs in Mexico because I really want to work on my Spanish more. I don’t want to go back to Mexico without having a fairly sure job, however, because I don’t want to end up flat broke again. I’ve got some good leads, however. If that happens, I’ll leave in July most likely. I’ll also apply to a couple other paid internships – one promising one is in Malawi. Finally, the last serious option is going to work in China. (I’ve got an offer I can pretty much take whenever I want at a decent school.)

Interesting things on the way.

I’d been invited to a birthday party. It would be fun. Problem was, it was being held at a fancy Mediterranean restaurant in Pasaje Enriquez, and I didn’t want to spend the money.

But I didn’t want to miss the fun, either.

“I don’t know what to dooooooooo,” I moaned to a friend.

Then I laughed. “Wow,” I said. “My life here must be tough if this is the most stressful decision I have to make.”

I then downed a ham-and-cheese sandwich and drank a beer a the restaurant while my friends ate.

Is travel necessarily challenging?

I love travel. Duh. It’s obviously my one consistent passion while I’m flaky with almost everything else.

In the past, when explaining to people why I love travel, I’d often say something like the following:

“I love travel because it constantly challenges me.”

But is this really true? To my fellow long-term travelers: are we really constantly challenged? Or is part of the appeal the ease of living the nomad’s life?

Sure, there are some challenging aspects. We navigate unfamiliar terrain. We make friends with people from widely different backgrounds. We seek to understand, to adapt.

But deep down – when it comes to our lifestyles – I sometimes wonder whether being abroad suits me because I find it easier.

There’s a great deal of possible explanations for this. One is that I’ve always been a bit of a weirdo, and traveling in some ways allows me to fit in. If you’ve ever hung around a group of long-term travelers or expats, it’s like the Island of Misfit Toys. Suits me.

But mostly, decisions seem easier abroad. I do what feels right, and what feels right is often more obvious. That’s not to say it’s always easy, but sometimes it seems that things are just clearer and simpler.

Anyways, I’ll tell you one thing: with few exceptions (kidney infection and a stupid fight with roommate, for example) my life in Guatemala was not that stressful. I hardly felt melancholy or anxious.

But really, how much did I have to decide in Guatemala? The only major decision I made was the one to go to Mexico to do the CELTA, and it wasn’t too bad.

Now that I’m back in Canada, things seem so much more pressing. I’m trying to decide where to go next. It’s quite likely China. (I have a job offer and will let them know by Monday.) It’s also quite possible that it’ll be Mexico. But it could also be Vietnam, Russia, Thailand…

Really, this is only a decision of where to go for a year. But someone, back in my home country, it feels like I am deciding the rest of my life. The anxiety over this is really overwhelming – I can feel it in my chest and I have a hard time doing anything but think about it. I know that I shouldn’t worry so much. After all, anywhere I go will be interesting. But back home, surrounded by family, friends and expectations, it all seems so damn important.

I have often called Quetzaltenango Never Never Land for twenty and thirty-somethings. People like me can go there, and never really grow up (in that find a 9-5 desk job, get married, have 2.5 kids and a house in the suburbs kind of way.)

I miss it.

I always suffer from bad reverse culture shock. This time is no different, and as such I’ve been feeling really down in the dumps since getting back to Canada. This will pass, but until then don’t expect much writing from me. Melancholy and writing don’t really mix for me – lucky, because otherwise this blog would be awfully mopey.

But the long-term traveler will pick up a lot of habits that only become apparent when he/she gets home.

I remember when I got back from Burkina Faso the first time in 2006, I kept on forgetting to flush the toilet.

“Why aren’t you flushing the toilet, goddammit?” My roommate would ask.

“Sorry dude,” I would say. “I got used to hole-in-the-ground toilets, and holes in the ground don’t flush.”

Now that I’m back in Canada, I am starting to notice some habits I’ve picked up from the last 8 months in Latin America:

Disculpe. When I bump into someone on the street here, it’s the first thing I blurt out.

Leaving my shoes on in the house. In Mexico, people leave their shoes on when they go to someone’s house for a dinner or party or whatnot. I was actually told recently that its considered rude to take off your shoes: what, you think my floor’s too dirty for your feet? Now that I’m back in Canada, I’m having a hard time remembering that it’s the opposite.

Throwing toilet paper in the wastebasket and not the toilet. Well, this is mostly a habit I had when I left Guatemala, because plumbing in Mexico is often better. But in Guatemala, you always put the toilet paper in a wastebasket. This might seem gross at first, but when you consider the quality of plumbing, you realize that the other alternative is overflowing, clogged toilets instead. When I was back in Canada in December, I often tossed my toilet paper in the garbage, and then had to – gag – pick it out with my bare hands.

Washing dishes by hand. When I finish eating here, I go and wash my dishes in the sink like I would do in my house in Xela. Then I realize my aunt’s fancy house has a fancy dishwasher, and I’ve gotten my hands wet for nothing. (This isn’t a bad habit, because any apartment I’m ever gonna live in probably isn’t going to have a dishwasher.)

Smiling at people or even – gasp – saying hello! What’s with all the scowls and lack of eye contact around here?

I still have much more to write about Latin America, so that is what will probably fill the blog while I’m doing nothing in Canada for a bit.

Cuidate.

So is this what I should do?

As I mentioned a while back, I was brought up with a certain point of view about “careers.” A career, I always thought as a child and adolescent, is something “impressive.” It’s a “real job” with a title, the kind of title that makes someone go “oooooh… they must be smart.” Lawyer. University Professor. Doctor. Policy Analyst. A life not spent at a “smart person’s job” is a life wasted.

I am a smart person. I graduated at the top of my grad school class, and I’ve always done well at most “brainy” things. I could get a PhD in international affairs, or I could become a lawyer.

But just because I can, does that mean that I should? Most of these “fancy” jobs are social sciences related. And while I’m good at social sciences, I’m going to be honest: I’m not passionate about them. I spent two years in a social sciences Masters program, and I was never that into it. A few papers here and there were interesting, but my juices never really flowed. I looked at some of my friends and colleagues – those who got excited about conferences, articles and so forth – and found myself kind of jealous.

Teaching I actually enjoy. Maybe I should go with what I enjoy, what gets my juices flowing, and see where it takes me.

The only problem is that I still have it somewhat embedded in my brain that this is not the kind of job I should do for the rest of my life. I should do this for awhile, but then at 30 or something get a “real” job. Because if I spent my whole life teaching, I’d somehow “regret” it later.

But what if I don’t regret it? What if I do this, and have a wonderful and interesting life? What if I’m happy the whole way? Will I look back at the age of 75 and wish I’d been a lawyer, that I’d “challenged” myself more?

I guess we’ll see.

“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.