cshell

Bloggity blog

I bought the laptop with the ostensible purpose of blogging more. So I suppose that in that vein I should actually blog occasionally...

So let's start with what I've been up to lately. Not a ton, nothing too exciting. A lot of watching tv and playing video games (I'm playing Myst right now - kind of stuck, but enjoying it when I'm not stuck). I bought Pirates but haven't started playing it yet, no time yet.

Over the weekend I hung out with danno on Saturday night (just watched a movie) - we watched Bourne Supremacy. I was unimpressed, probably because it's no longer new and cool like the first one was. I did enjoy the car chase scenes and would watch it again for those, but I didn't care much about the story (or lack thereof). I enjoyed the books because they were fun and fast paced and not taxing on the brain, and thought I'd like the movie for that reason too, but somehow it still wasn't enough. (Maybe because Matt Damon looks like crap in that series?) Oh, and I recognized a name from the LOTR series in Bourne Supremacy, but couldn't figure out who he was in that movie (it was Karl Urban - Eomer in LOTR and Kirill in B.S.)

Yesterday I went shopping with Ianthe. We bought shoes and some clothes (she bought tops, I bought bottoms). I wore one of my pairs of new footwear today - a pair of ankle boots. (Ok, actually sort of mid calf.) Of course all I bought was black shoes. I think at some point I thought about buying brown or some other color. But why mess with a winning formula? I suppose I could have bought casual shoes in other colors, but didn't see any that I thought I'd actually wear. But I was all excited to have on a new(ish) cute outfit today, even in the rain. I felt all sexy in my little outfit today - even though it did sort of make me look rounder than usual (ok, fat and fabulous ;-)

Then in the early evening a friend came over that I hadn't seen for a while. We went to grab dinner at the little Japanese place down the street from me. We talked about his recent travels to S. Korea. He was all excited, it was the first time he'd been out of the country. He was sooooo excited that he's thinking of giving up his job to go teach English in Korea. Hm.... I'm happy for him if that's what he really wants to do, but I wonder if it's the right thing to do, to turn his whole life upside down to go to a country he's been to for a total of 12 days and where he doesn't read or speak the language. He said he got around fine, but he also had friends to help him around. I wonder how he'll get along on his own? Oh well, he's a grown up. Maybe I'll have a pen pal in another time zone?

His adventure and wanting to run away from home and become a teacher (ok, not that being a teacher is his real dream - it's getting the hell out of the valley), and another friend's adventures in cooking school have me thinking of quitting my job and going off to live somewhere else in the world for a while. Another friend took a while off on sabbatical too, and it all makes me ponder doing it - getting out of this place for a while, seeing who/what I am when I'm not here, see if I could be creative if I went someplace that I could indulge that side of myself.

It's doable monetarily if I'm ok with postponing other fun stuff (like clothes shopping and gadget shopping and.... hm....) Actually the only reason for me not to run away from home and go do something fun is that I'm not really sure what it is I'd want to do. I looked around on the web last night and found a set of courses at the British Institute in Florence that sound awesome. Maybe I'd live in Florence for 3 months, learn the language and take music and art classes and then travel around Europe and/or the rest of the world later? I can picture living in Florence (though I suspect I'd get lonely - I know I'd make friends, but still... everyone I know and love would be on the other side of the world).

When I was talking to poker guy last night about his travels, he asked where I'd like to go (as I was saying I was thinking about where to take my vacation this year) and we pretty much ruled out everywhere but Europe (at least for vacation). I'd go different places if I were taking a year off than if I were going on vacation by myself. Yes I can travel alone (I can figure things out, etc.), but I don't want to. I hate being that *ON* all the time. I'd like to have someone (or a couple of someones) with me to help with the decision-making (where are we going, what are we doing, how are we getting there, what are we eating, where are we staying, etc.) I'd love to see Australia and New Zealand, but again it's not as interesting if it's just me going by myself. (There's no way in hell I'd talk myself into bungy-jumping, but I could definitely see someone daring me into it.) Asia isn't particularly on my list of places to go (except maybe Japan - I don't know why I have this knee-jerk anti-Asia thing, but there it is). I suppose I'd also go different places if I had someone else to go with. At least partially because we couldn't only stick to my agenda all the time, but also because there are places that I'd go with someone else (central america, Brazil, parts of Africa, etc. - slightly more adventurous places).

Is it scary that I'm seriously trying to figure out how to take a year out, and what I'd do with that year, and how I'd finance it, and what would I do for money at the end of the year? (I'm really afraid that I couldn't come back to work, but I also don't want to have to go backward lifestyle-wise. While I don't make that much by Valley standards, it goes amazingly far when I'm the only one to spend my money on - if I had to save for vacations for two or cars for two or children or grad school, it wouldn't go nearly as far). Some of it is just dissatisfaction with work right now. And I've fought through that before and managed to find something that keeps me there and even sometimes find some enjoyment out of it. And lots of people are dissatisfied and don't run away from home to join the circus (or the grown up equivalent). But what keeps them there? Is it fear? Because I'd hate to have my life slip through my fingers because I was too afraid to reach out and grab it. It's not like me to back down from something difficult or scary. So am I trying to talk myself into or out of taking the time off? Maybe a bit of both? I have a feeling that the hardest thing would be figuring out what to do with myself when I got back.

Then again, if the financial planner is right, I can retire at 50... so why not wait until then and spend the rest of my life traveling in style to which I KNOW I can become accustomed? Because I'm not sure I want to wait that long, to keep postponing my happiness. Not that I would necessarily find happiness, but I'm sure I'd learn a ton. And think of the everyday adventures I could go on (just going to shop in the little markets, immersing myself in a new language and way of life, meeting new people). Hm... maybe I'll split the difference - I'll do some looking around and planning and studying, and when the perfect opportunity comes along, I'll be ready to jump on it. Yeah, that's it, that's the ticket....

Posted by cshell at January 10, 2005 09:05 PM