v>
Some Reflections on My New Life
Monday, 1st September 2003
I’ve been travelling for over a month now, and wanted to write down
some general things about how my life has changed.
I would point out that I wrote almost all of this when in America. Am
now staying in the Mexican town of Ensenada, a couple of hours bus
journey from the border. I feel totally unprepared for Mexico, I have
been feeling just as disorientated and inadequate to what I have
decided to do as I did on my first day travelling. The lack of
language, the doubts about what is safe to drink/eat, the worries
about getting robbed/run over are all kind of exhausting. Slowly
adjusting, staying in a truly wonderfully peaceful place (Hostel Sauzal) a few miles out of town, which is helping.
My new travelling life is strange. The thing which hit me from day
one is that I am now very much an observer on life: I watch people
live their lives, buy second hand furniture, worry about their
boyfriends, suffer personal tragedies, and I move on to the next
city. This nomadic existence is certainly demonstrating to me that I
am not the centre of the world: I arrive in a new place, and people
already have their dreams, relationships, problems, which I have
nothing to do with. Perhaps it’s just that Daniel monomania that I
ever felt like that, but at home, there were things that I was pretty
central to – family and home life, work, close friends etc.
I am becoming more relaxed about this feeling, and am recognising the
very positive side to it: as the perennial outsider, people I don’t
know that well often now seem happy to open up to me and share the
problems that have been perplexing them. I try and offer my homemade
philosophy and social observations, and for some people it seems to
be useful, but ultimately it is their life I’m commenting on, rather
than my own.
Although I don’t have a real life anymore, in contrast, travelling is
making me feel very alive, as if after a long, long sleep. Every day
seems to bring an incredible variety. I encounter so many odd people,
locals and travellers, it would be impossible to list them all. I’ve
heard why Zoroastrianism is superior to Islam from a refugee from
Iran as he made our felafels in Vancouver, I’ve watched as a primly
dressed black woman scribbled manically on green sheets of paper only
to throw them onto the floor of a bus in San Diego, the other
passengers looking on in powerless concern. The list goes on.
Every day brings basic survival type questions that I would rarely
have worried about in my previous London life. Where am I going to
eat today? How do I use public transport? Where am I sleeping
tomorrow? How close have I got to my daily budget at the moment?
Should I try and talk to the people sitting next to me in the coffee
house? Are the people I just met going to show up tonight or have I
offended them in some way? All these questions back home pretty much
would have the same answer every day, my brain not bothering to bring
them to my attention. Now, in the most basic ways, I am always having
to think, and I am totally naive and ignorant about each place I come
to. I am totally dependent on locals giving me accurate advice,
totally reliant on trying to sense whether each new person is worth
trusting/talking to/avoiding.
It doesn’t feel like being on a long holiday. I spend a lot of time
doing really mundane things: handwashing clothes, looking for tourist
information, calling to book the next room for the night and finding
a bus to get me there, checking the internet (both for messages and
my bank balances), cooking cheap meals in hostel kitchens and so on.
I guess most people go on holidays with more or less everything they
will need, give or take a trip to the laundret halfway through. I’m
far less like a turtle than my big rucksack suggests, I am
continually having to restock.
Recharging is also important. There is something quite draining about
aspects of this lifestyle, particularly having to always be on the
alert and know where all my stuff is at any point in the day (eg:
sometimes having to lock and unlock my hostel locker several times
over while I get ready and showered in the morning). While I haven’t
lost my incredible excitment about what I am doing, there are days
when I do very little, trying to recharge a little mentally for the
next step.
I also suddenly have lots and lots of time. This is one of the very
best things about my new life. Some people have commented on how long
these updates are – but I have so much time on my hands that
sitting in a public library or hostel for an hour plus makes little
dent in a day. It’s not like on holiday where there is a set amount
of time to fit everything in to, where time badly used is time
wasted. After a few initially stressful weeks (taking the London
paradigm with me even though it was no longer applicable) I am
gradually starting to calm down, even though I have a long way to go.
A lot of what I am trying to do (see the world and develop as a
person) can probably only happen via osmosis, so I have to calm down
and absorb rather than try and grab.
On a practical basis, part of the time richness I have is that I have
relatively very little money to spend. I can’t have a crazy spending
day anywhere (anywhere in North America at least), so am forced to
slow down, spend time walking, spend ages deciding which cheap
restaurant to eat in, chat to random people. I read a
book, “Vagabonding” (Rolf Potts), which talks about this very well.
This way of living seems to require something of a shift in attitude.
Instead of spending money to get happiness (buying possessions, nice
meals and exciting experiences), money is now largely just something
that lets me survive (it secures food and shelter). I now get most of
my happiness and sense of accomplishment from spending time. Spending
time involves things like taking part in long conversations, cooking
meals, meeting new people, lying in a hammock all afternoon. I am
starting to really appreciate having time to wander, to write (I am
writing a lot more than what I have been emailing out), to sit in
parks and watch people, to spend a train journey making funny faces
at an unruly toddler. How to do all this crazy hippy new age stuff
properly, I’m still working out, but sure more increasingly messianic
updates will be coming from me as I develop this theme.
Physically my life is very different. Not sure precisely, but must be
walking around for at least 2-3 hours every day, plus occasional
hike, surfing etc. Walking with my pack on my back was pretty hard at
first, in New York got real pains in my knees. These seem to have
gone away now – I can feel the muscles running down the backs of my
legs starting to stand out a bit. I’m also doing a bit of pilates
most mornings (I took a weekly course during Bank of England lunch
breaks for a short while). It does seem to be having a helpful
effect, and of course now I have time to spend stretching and
exercising most mornings (although I must look pretty weird lying on
the dorm floor doing the pilates moves).
Adjusting to the solitude isn’t easy. At home there were office
friendships, frequent meals out with friends and my mobile which
could contact someone most nights. Now there is just email and people
I meet along the way (who are often really cool, but aren’t the same
as long time friends). Two things are hard: one, the desire to speak
what I have just experienced “Isn’t this a great view?” etc (this is
one of the main reasons writing these descriptive updates is so
enjoyable, I guess); two, when anything bad happens, such as when a
person is rude to me, at home I could turn to a friend and they’d
say, “yeah, this other guy sounds like a moron” or whatever. Now
stuff happens and I just have to think to myself – was that my fault?
Should I have acted differently or was I by and large doing the right
thing?
Meeting people is certainly interesting. There seems to be a real
paradox – a key part to be successful at meeting people is not to
need to meet people. Few things seem to scare people off as yapping
endlessly from the first meeting, or clinging on to them
desperately. Another paradox is that it feels important to make a
judgement about people immediately, if only to prevent getting into
trouble, but then the whole point of doing a trip like this is to
meet unusual people and to try to be more open-minded.
One of the stranger things about meeting new people is that these
random friendships often seem to have an optimum life span. I’d like
to meet people with whom I could travel with for a while, but have
found that after a certain point often people seem to start to feel a
bit put out by this Englishman always being around. Something which
I’ve also noticed in previous travels is that a hell of a lot of
groups or travelling friends or whatever already have some serious
stress or fracture in their relationship, and my arrival and happy go
lucky tagging along can brings these things to a head. One member of
the group is happy for me to come along as long as I want, another is
already pissed off that she isn’t spending as much time with the
first person as she’d like and doesn’t want me adding to the problem,
a third just doesn’t especially like me and … you get the picture.
The best thing seems to be meeting with other solo travellers, who
are glad for a bit of company and often whose mindsets are closer to
my own regarding the key travel things like budget/goals etc.
Some things I’ve brought with me that have been great
Resealable freezer bags: amazing. You can never have too many of
these versatile little guys. Anyone who is planning to come and visit
me please bring me more.
Concentrated “multiple use soap”: when you’ve only got four days
worth of clothes, machine washing becomes quite expensive.
Teva sports sandals: very useful. I wear them in the shower, on the
beach and have hiked mountains in them, with only minor blistering.
If only them came with a smart snap on black top for going out
drinking…
Eagle Creek sponge bag: when I bought this it looked like it might
not cope with one bottle of shampoo, but it somehow expands to fit
all the endless washing-related stuff I have.
Mini Maglite torch: tiny but does all the lighting and bear spotting
that I need.
Not so great
Nomad silk sleeping sheet. Considering the price of £24, the
stitching in this rips awfully easily. By the time I get to somewhere
where I will need it, all the stitching will probably have torn out
and it will just be one very long sheet.
Sunglasses. I keep chipping or losing these. The current pair must
last me for at least a week, please.
Am I missing anything from home?
Yes, pies. I really could eat a good
chicken and mushroom or pork pie. Some juicy meats, thick hard pasty.
Mmmm. I think this is because Americans keep asking me about what I
like about England, and I always seem to return to extolling the
virtues of good British pies.
Questions?
If you want more information about this area you can email the author or check out our North America Insiders page.
