Life Lately
One of the things I get out of travelling is the opportunity to reflect on life. I think life really has been as good as I've been saying all year, but I still feel a need for change.
My relationships are good. I'm especially excited that hopeforyou has a full-time job that includes health insurance, which should mean that I can worry less when I'm with her and just enjoy our time together. We've been communicating better as well, so after wavering for most of this year, our relationship is starting to feel like a long-term thing again.
laughingstone and I recently had our first anniversary, and celebrated with a lovely trip down the coast through Monterey and Big Sur. We climbed over sand dunes to get to a deserted beach, frolicked in that creek with benches, and stopped at the Santa Cruz boardwalk and at a hot tubbing place on the way home. I still wish I could spend more time with her, but I'm very pleased with how close we've become.
caesia moved to the Bay Area over the summer, so it's less hard for us to get together. I'm saying 'less hard' instead of 'easy' because she's still as busy as she was when she was at uni, and I'm hardly a sit-at-home kind of bloke either. Still, we've been together nearly three years, so our relationship feels close and solid.
It was some time last year that I started saying I wanted to make deeper connections with people, so I was perfectly happy having just three partners. Still, when thornedillusion and I clicked after she drove me home from Crafts Night, I certainly didn't complain. I love our time together and look forward to more.
Work is going well, too. I was having a few problems earlier in the year but they've since been resolved, and it's nice having a view of the Bay Bridge from my desk. I'm also still getting a lot out of massage and yoga at work, and it's gotten me into the habit of looking after my body more. Recently I started going to the gym to lift weights and get my upper body strength up. I need to work out how to eat better, though; the fact that I eat out most nights means I'm taking in more kilojoules than I burn off. I suppose that as an absolute last resort I can have a little less ice cream. =)
It's still a struggle to get enough downtime as well. I've been getting away to places like Harbin Hot Springs more often, so I do get to unwind, but I've I've been going on fewer relaxing walks. Commuting by bike is great-I'm looking forward to getting around by bike in Amsterdam, since it's been over a week since I've ridden and I'm really starting to feel it. But it means that when I get home, I don't have the energy to go for a walk. It's good when I get up to Corona Heights, where I can look down on the city and meditate, and even just hanging out at Duboce Park and watching kids and dogs run around is a good destressor. But somehow I seem to have less time for that.
On the flipside, I'm allowing myself more vedge time at home. I used to worry about me not getting to do various projects around the house, but I've trained myself to not stress over it, and just get around to them when it feels right. As a result, I've actually been getting to those projects-restringing blinds, installing lights, cleaning up the garage, etc.-more often! Stressing out takes time, I guess. There are a couple more things like that I want to do before the year is out, and I'm really looking forward to doing a big cleanup and getting rid of a tonne of crap, this time for sure. But if it ends up being more like a spring cleaning, that's okay too.
So life's plodding along very happily-no complaints at all. Still, I can't shake this sense of wanting change. It's the same feeling I had around the turn of the century, and I responded by dropping everything and moving to Holland, where I am right now. In some ways it was tough, especially since most of the time I lived here I didn't have any close friends. It was a good opportunity for finding myself, though, so it's an experience I'm pleased to have had.
I'm not sure if it's a change of country I need, though. It's always a relief to leave the United States, but when I get back I realise there are things I've missed there as well. I definitely do want to move to Australia again in a few years but I'm not sure if that's the craving for change I'm looking for, either. And travel itself also certainly isn't it; hopeforyou and I want to go to India next year to see a total solar eclipse, and when that happens, I'll have visited all six inhabited continents within two years. There are other parts of the world I want to see-the Middle East and Scandanavia to name a couple-but even seeing every part of the world I want wouldn't resolve what I'm feeling.
Maybe nothing will resolve it. Even if I had everything I wanted, a poly family in an urban but leafy intentional community with little fluffy animals in some nonexistant city that satisfied my every need, happily getting by on fewer working hours and more travel time, the ability to quell the world's greed and ignorance and cure all the hatred and suffering, I'd still feel like something's missing, that something needs to change. Maybe this feeling is just a manifestation of never being completely satisfied with myself, and if I can learn to accept myself and trust that people really do love me and that I deserve it, this feeling will go away.
Hmmmm. Yeah. Travelling is good for me.