While over the clouds

And so, I left once again. Now in another plane. This time though going west, taking me closer and closer to “home”. Feeling confused, excited and incredibly scared at the same time.

Reading about other traveller’s stories of how they started their travels or their uneasiness about this is very enlightening if you are in a good emotional state and you can take the fact that you see yourself reflected in every line; but now, it’s not really helping, I need a comforting though. And instead I just keep on wondering: Will this be possible? Will it be possible to stay back home? To live by everyone’s standards and rules? Which makes me think something even worse, what if I start living like that and don’t notice it until it’s too late…

I’ve had a taste of the life I want, but I still need more. I still need to feel like I’m taking part, I’m doing something important, I’m creating, destroying, changing and mixing things. I don’t want to have a perfect life or a perfect career. I want mess, problems.I want to have a reason to wake up in the morning, a passion, a path. Will I be able to find it or it it something that we develop and create? Can I do that “back home”, the place I left because I couldn’t see a way out? I’m not the same. Now at least I’ve found a voice to say and express this questions. And I found others who feel the same need and have the same interrogants. That has helped; I belong at least to a group of people. Now after meeting these people I feel like I’m a part of something and I have the impression that these friendships are going to last and be with me, one way or another.

It’s incredible how easy is to relate to them, we all understand that one way or another we are all linked and connected. I’m not the outsider, the excluded or self-excluded. And I am responsible for everything that happens to me. All that makes me happy. And that’s why I think the idea of going home it’s so scary, because I believe that I will loose all that, my safety net….. the idea of being understood by the people who surround me, the people who I feel are family.

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The Hard Way

At school we prove that we’ve learned by passing tests. We consolidate knowledge that way and move on to the next point on the syllabus. We don’t normally take two tests on one topic and we feel like we are building upwards, from a very consolidated structure.

Life teaches us lessons as well, but the way we are tested is different. We need to fail first, to realize that a test was set; then we understand what we’ve done wrong or a part at least, try another angle, probably fail again and keep on trying different options until we get to a point where because we’ve done it so many times we think it’s OK, job well done, let’s move on. Time passes and something happens, we are being tested again and that’s when we feel that we haven’t learned a single thing, there is no structure, no pyramid, no foundations and we are disappointed with ourselves.

That feeling of disappointment is actually worse than the pain the test causes. Because let’s face it, everything that is felt as a test is emotional. What we try to do is use our intellect to reeducate our emotions, our responses and come up with a different reaction to the same stimulus.

I want to believe (I need to) that we’ve learned, we’ve grown and developed through all this. If not everything’ s just pain.

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Changing at HNRC

When I feel I’ve grown I get scared. Thinking that people cannot change it’s easier, one has the idea of continuity and accepts who one is (when possible). The moment you believe you’ve actually changed everything can happen, and that teenager idea of the person you want to be might become true if you work on it.

This teenager idea that I’m referring is the one that makes you look up at some people and hang out with them so you can copy their ways and coolness. We’ve all had these situations, if not they wouldn’t be all over Hollywood.

Does this change comes from a decision or is it situational? It might be both actually.

But is it the chore or just behavioral stuff that we change? Does this change happen when we get more in touch with our inner self and what we are doing is actually some kind of spring cleaning?

I find it easier when I’m away from home, maybe that’s the reason I don’t want to head back just yet. I don’t know how this new person will adapt to the old world.

I remember always dreaming with the idea of moving so I could make a new me, a cooler me. Is this part of the universal teenage idea? Maybe…. I don’t know if I can generalize..

This new me can show up alone to a bar, a cinema or a cafe and don’t get all worked up about it. But it’s still working on eating lunch alone or leaving the house in the morning without destination or plan, as well as being without a romantic partner and the general drama that the situation involves, and enjoying it. That’s a difficult one, maybe the hardest. But Hey! I’ve made some changes, who says I cannot accomplish some more.

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Hanoi’s great moments

Hanoi has it’s great moments. Sitting in a cafe with fake vine leaves covering the windows, in a part of town that is new to us where people are still curious about our foreignness and things seem new to us but coming from the past. Looking like it was 10, 20, 30 years ago.

Trucks struggling to pass by between bicycles and people, motorbikes an chickens.

Driving at night between blowing bubbles made by a five year-old holding to his father steer-wheel letting us see the magic this place has to offer.

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Blocked

I’ve been avoiding writing for a while now. Never wanting to put feelings and thoughts on paper. When they are out they do things, change, transform, grow and develop. I’m not always ready for that. My mind plays tricks on me (sorry Green Day!!). A great idea (at least seems like that to my simple mind in the moment of creation…) is formed and comes to consciousness but my hands refuse to do anything involving it. I’ve been doing this for years; getting stuck is one of my specialities. I could probably give lectures on how to avoid thoughts. It looks like laziness… I wish it was that… I see it more as an abandonment of my responsibility towards myself….. wow that doesn’t make me feel guilty at all(?)………
I guess this is one step forward. I’m writing about not writing…. Let’s hope next post is more creative

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