In Motion Again Soon

I am currently in Sweden, and have been here for the past two months.

Tomorrow, my travel partner and I are flying to Britain to stay for two months. We will be living in a hostel in London for the first week. Thankfully, we have ear plugs this time (the best thing you can get for hostel living, as learned through hard earned experience).

Big cities make me a bit nervous, but it will be a cool experience.

Since I started traveling in May of last year, I have visited six countries. They were France, Belgium, The Netherlands, Bulgaria, Greece, and Sweden. I have grown accustomed to hearing the people around me always speaking a different language. It will be surreal to be somewhere where I can hear conversations around me and understand them again. Oddly enough I miss eavesdropping, hearing the funny or interesting stuff people say to each other, and knowing that I can walk up to almost any random stranger and strike up a conversation. It was something I never appreciated until I visited non-English speaking countries.

Hearing different languages around me has been amazing too, and I will definitely miss hearing Swedish every day. I love this language... Still working on learning it but I understand a lot more than I did a couple months ago.

It's been really nice to be somewhere calm for a while, and to take a break from always going from place to place, big cities, and lots of people. I experienced that for a bit when we went to Stockholm (a great place by the way), but for the most part, we've been in a small and very quiet village.

London should be quite a shock, and I'm pretty excited to see it. After London we will be flying to Romania in April, to stay near Transylvania and visit the supposedly haunted forest, Hoia Baciu (which I plan to photograph extensively!) I have seen amazing pictures of the place on the internet here and there for some years now, and it's unbelievable to know that I will actually physically be there not too long from now.

Since I began my adventures last year, it has been a huge goal of mind to find a job I can perform while traveling. In fact it's been my only real concrete goal. I have finally found something! I am officially a freelance writer. This has always been a lofty dream of mine, one that I thought I might have a shot at accomplishing some distant day in the future.
Anxiety about money pushed me to pursue opportunities just for the hell of it, and I started seeking out craigslist writing gigs and sending out lots of applications each day. I honestly did not expect that anything would come from it given the fact that I have almost no experience writing officially.

I've been shocked, in the best way possible, by how well it has worked out. I feel an immense freedom as the result of this opportunity, to the degree of almost being frightened (in a good way) at the possibilities that lie ahead. I am definitely feeling the dizziness of freedom lately.

History

In my lifetime I have always heard people talk about their ancestry. The history of their own country, who their family lineage descended from, essentially identifying with things that I felt no connection to.

It seems almost blasphemous to admit now, but I never felt that any of that had anything to do with me, or now. I did not feel a connection to the factors that shaped humanity in terms of society or race or anything of that nature. I thought nationalist ideas were silly, and that people exclaiming that they are "Proud to be an American" sounded a bit foolish. They didn't choose to be born there, and being American had nothing to do with them, they had just happened to exist in this place as easily as they could have happened to come into existence somewhere else.

It seems so obvious now, but since traveling Europe I have realized that different places really are different. I always defaulted to the opinion that "we are all human, regardless of where we reside", which is of course true, but there are so many other factors that shape us, and that is nowhere near the whole picture.

Any time I tried to pick up a history book or was in the vicinity of someone talking about periods of the past, my eyes would glaze over. I am currently staying in Greece and there is a book at this house called "The Fingerprints of the Gods". I thought the title sounded interesting so I picked it up and flipped to the first page, which showed a letter from some past military figure discussing features of a map from 1513. I was instantly bored and put the book down.

A week or two later, for some (unremembered now) reason, I picked that book back up. I discovered that the letter on the first page was talking about a map that displayed knowledge of Antarctica, the way it was before the ice age, and that this knowledge was supposedly unknown until the 1900s. Once I deciphered the dry jargon of the letter and realized the implications of this mystery, I was hopelessly intrigued.

I did not put this 500+ book down for the following 3 days, and it shifted my entire perspective on the history of the human race.

For the first time I actually thought deeply into where we came from, what inspired the knowledge we currently take for granted of space, mathematics, agriculture, languages, what ancient mysteries and intelligence have been forever lost either by accident with time, or on purpose by being destroyed.
I finally understood the fascination so many people around me have for history, the things we "know" and the other, considerably more numerous unknowns about this period referred to as pre-history.

I thought scientists had a pretty good idea of how humanity has come to be. I am not so sure now.

The book presents convincing evidence that advanced humans (on par with, or possibly beyond our level of technology and intelligence now) have existed on earth way longer ago than is commonly proclaimed. For some reason this really struck me. It gave me a burning, and unique form of frustration, of wanting (and possibly needing) to know more about this.

Legends exist in seemingly completely separate, ancient cultures that have shared characteristics, leading one to wonder if there was not a common denominator that engendered their similar spontaneous advancements. There are stories of "gods" coming to undeveloped tribes, in some cases consisting of savages, and bringing them the gift of civilization, teaching them not to cannibalize one another, sharing knowledge of language, science, medicine, and more. It seems to me as though there was a civilization far more advanced than the rest of the world at that time (enough to make them seem immortal beings by comparison) that made it a point to share their knowledge for the advancement and prosperity of humanity.

I am unbelievably inspired and mystified by this stuff, and no longer feel disconnected from the history of humanity.

Goals, long and short term.

Become fluent in at least 2 foreign languages (or more).

Get a lot better at chess.

Go to Germany and the Czech Republic.

Long camp trip (a month or 2) where I live almost completely off the land.

Visit Transylvania and the "haunted" Hoia-Baciu forest, perhaps camp there.
















Take the Transyberian railway through Russia into SE Asia.

Buy and renovate a house (to sell or live in).

Get a lot better at hooping and possibly make it into a performance art.

Finish the book I already started or start a completely new one.

Find a reliable and location independent source of income.

Read a lot more, write a lot more.

Attempt to sell my art at a festival(s).

Have a really awesome pet companion.

It's  my favorite season. Apparently pumpkin pie is quite an American thing, so since I am currently living with 3 Europeans, I plan to introduce them to this wonder.

Life is very simple right now. Lately I've been spending my days learning Swedish, playing chess, and making electronic songs, all of which are very fun. I'm staying in a tiny village where people grow their own vegetables, eat their own animals, and often travel by horse or donkey drawn carriage.

Jag gillar att lära mig ett nu språk, och det är mycket mer lätt med någon svenska  här. Jag älskar svenska språket, men jag är inte talar bra.


I am still in Bulgaria, but we're heading down to Greece in a few weeks, then up to Sweden. The plan is to visit America after that, so I'm hoping it all comes together. Loving someone from another culture complicates but also makes more interesting a lot of things. I am exactly where I want to be.

8-29-15

I am currently staying in rural Bulgaria, doing a work exchange. The work consists of digging up soil for a stone path, sanding and oiling windows, and other various tasks like picking plums or trimming plants. I get free room and board in exchange for my work hours.

It's the first time in a while that I have gotten up early in the mornings and been around a lot of animals. The physical work makes my mind more quiet and helps me sleep better. I feel creative; I feel at peace.

I love this simple life, I love traveling, my passion has been ignited and my dreams have been set into motion. That constant yearning I always had to see foreign places, to not know where I will be next month, to learn as I go, to rely on my wits and spontaneity, has finally been fulfilled. I have always abhorred and revolted against routine and monotony, and this is the ultimate manifestation of that rejection, embracing adventure.

The more I see, the more I want to see.

On July 29th, I had a plane ticket back to Omaha Nebraska, but I decided not to take it. It was a spontaneous decision. I was planning to return because I thought I didn't have enough money to keep traveling, but I didn't want to separate from my travel partner/love, and there was so much more of Europe I wanted to see.

Going back to the states would have felt like giving up. Something I had to do; succumbing to defeat. I decided fuck that. I decided I will make this work however I have to, which included/includes being a lot more frugal, finding cheap or free accommodation, going somewhere very affordable (like Bulgaria), and having my friend sell my most prized possession back home, my acoustic Fender guitar.

I've learned that I feel certain pulls in certain directions. Urges calling me to do something, some type of intuitive desire. Fulfilling that desire is important, and once the commitment is made, things tend to fall into place. Once you make a specific thing your goal, or your way of life, it becomes the only option, and that is the way to make things happen. Your creative faculties then go into supporting this because you realize it's your only choice.

"Leap, and grow wings on the way down."

Support for a talented friend.

I am fascinated by my friend Chris. We have always related on a certain level because we both have a tendency to be introverted and I feel like we both notice a lot, especially when it comes to social situations. It makes a quiet person feel a little less awkward to have another quiet person around. 

He is one of the nicest people I've met, smiles a lot, and has a calm and quiet demeanor, so it makes some of this intriguingly dark art he comes up with all the more interesting. I never knew the ideas or stories behind these pieces of art until I just read the website he finished working on, and now I am even more impressed.

http://www.littlehornandthecultofdreams.com/little-horn.html

Thoughts

I feel kind of lifeless today. My mind wants to know why, but maybe there isn't a why. Maybe I need to just let emotions and mental states pass on by, instead of clinging and wanting to dissect and analyze them. Maybe I need to have more self compassion, that thing that a lot of us find so fucking difficult.

Switching up routines is important, health is important, creating is important, mental experiments are something I need.

Maybe getting in touch with dreams again?

Maybe doing that thing where I split up my sleeping hours?

Perhaps simply exploring my own mind could bring some clarity. I find myself seeking distraction all the time, and I think that's normal, but also sort of crazy. Constant stimulation is not an answer. Just allowing oneself to reside in whatever mental state is present without struggle or self judgment is an answer. That includes boredom and lifelessness. I already feel better delving more into this nagging background static of emotion. It works so much better than trying to ignore it or find reasons why I should not be feeling that way.

Acceptance transforms things, resistance deepens them. It doesn't have to be such a struggle.