Much ado about almost something

Caution: Significant levels of late-night ruminations ahead, which may or may not make any sense at all. Read at your own risk. Feel free to turn back now.

I was tired hours ago, and I wanted to go to bed. But I kept thinking and forming phrases in my mind , and I knew that this evening would be my last night to myself for quite a while. So I'm here and I'm writing instead, about life, the universe, and everything, in a lengthy and possibly pointless reflection on several specific and nonspecific things.

Tomorrow I start my first trans-Siberian. I am, of course, nervous about this, because I'm always nervous about starting new trips. New trips in the sense of my job, of bits of organized travel that I haven't done yet, because obviously I want to do a good job and that comes in large part from knowing the territory beforehand. But also new trips in the sense of new journeys, a different part of the world for me and a new departure from the US and everything that forms part of my life there. I have to wander, this is a given. Exactly why, I'm not sure, but I know it's something fundamental that I have to do. Every time I leave, though, it makes me wonder a little more what my reception will be when I return. Will people still have a place for me in their lives, or will my place be filled with other things? Is it truly out of sight, out of mind? I can go months without seeing people I'm close to, but I still care about them just as much. I don't know if I inspire the same feelings or not. It's hard to maintain even friendships across long distances, to say nothing of romantic relationships. I try. Sometimes I fail miserably at both.

While in the US, I tried hard to see a lot of people. I managed to see almost everyone that I wanted to see, even if only briefly. But I always feel that I could have done more. People in DC I could have seen more often, as I was there for a while. People in Florida I scheduled so tightly that I sometimes missed them, or was horrifically late in seeing them, or saw them only far too briefly, or very occasionally missed them completely. I worry that many of my friends feel slighted, either because I was either constantly running around in Florida or constantly holed up in a computer cave in DC. I worry that my efforts, both here and in other areas, might have been counterproductive and in vain.

Sometimes I'm tempted to cut ties with everything. Start with a completely new slate somewhere, with neither past nor future to think about, no people to worry about. I want to go back to the Camino, when I felt completely free. I could easily do it, just disappear off the face of the earth for a while. The world is a big place, and I've only explored a small part of it. It's full of places that I could hide. But cutting ties with the life I've lived up to this point would hold its own set of problems. People I care about, people I love...I don't want to lose them. It's so hard for me to find people who are worth much of anything to me...most of the human race is entertaining, but very little more. People who are worth caring about are few and far between. People who aren't trying to own me in some way are even fewer.

For most of my life, there's been a constant struggle of trying to figure out where I stand in the world. Being strange made it hard for me to find friends as a child, though I could not for the life of me figure out what made me so different. I remember in elementary school wishing that I was pretty, because then maybe people might like me. Mostly, I wanted to be like everyone else. If being stupid and vapid meant that I might have friends, it seemed like a reasonable tradeoff. Impossible to make, but reasonable nonetheless. Later, I just wanted to leave the world. Possibly by meditating on top of a mountain somewhere. Possibly by doing something else.

I seem to have stopped at that thought there. Unsurprising, as it would have been a full stop in time.

But moving on. I'm still here, and I feel as though I need to justify my continued existence on this planet by doing something with it. I'm not a person who can just exist and be happy with a normal kind of life. Every time I try, I feel trapped. And I'm caught in a double bind, because in order to feel that I'm making any kind of progress I have to be moving around, but to finish and refine anything I need to be in one place. This is true of writing. This is true of photography. This is true of really almost everything. But I have trouble finding the balance. I would like to write something extraordinary. If this takes the form of fiction or creative nonfiction I don't care, but I need to write something that I'm proud of. I'm only inspired when I travel. I can only edit when I'm stationary. I would like to save the world in some manner. There are all sorts of things that need fixing. I'm still figuring out which Herculean task is mine, and how to go about doing it, and where I need to be. I would also like to have good people in my life. But I've always had the feeling that I was meant to walk alone. Now that I know what it's like to have friendships, I'm rather attached to them, but as I've said, relationships can be fragile and hard to maintain. Somehow I need to figure out what I'm doing here. And how to do it. And who to bring. Ideally, I'll have my girlfriend, my friends, a book or several, limitless opportunities to travel, and interesting projects that make a difference in the world. Inshallah that's what I'll be able to get.

So these are my disconnected thoughts for the evening. The questions swirling in the miasma of my mind. If you haven't followed this far I don't blame you; my mind takes circuitous paths and I haven't bothered to clear the underbrush. It's closing in on 3 in the morning now, and I have things to do tomorrow. continued preparations for work and life. Possibly, after writing all this, I'll be able to finally sleep. Or perchance, even to dream.