Pleasure

(Lisbon, Portugal: September 17, 2007)

So I am reading a book on this trip called Eat, Pray, Love. It's come highly recommended from a few friends, and Isabel was kind enough to give it to me on tape! Of course I left it at home though and wound up buying the book at the airport.

The author is talking about her life and her travels after a large change in her life and she decided to stay in Rome for the first 4 months of her travels to experience pleasure. She talks about the trouble she has truly letting go and enjoying herself fully. One reason for this is the American inability to relax. That Americans don't know how to do nothing. This is exactly one of the major issues I was trying to address in my time off. I don't know how to do nothing. I hardly even know how to do one thing at a time! My desire for efficiency has taught me to multi-task perpetually - mind you not to the point of sacrificing quality, but it does teeter on the edge, especially as I get older and my brain feels a little less capable. I essentially had 2 goals for these 5 months off. One was to learn how to relax and be okay with doing nothing, even if it was just for a few hours. The second was to figure out what I wanted to do about my current living situation.

I wasn't sure if I was any closer to learning how to relax, but I think I have gotten a bit better, although it's only been apparent (to me) secondarily through slight behavioral differences. I seem to be less organized now. For most people that would not be such a good thing, but for me it's progress! I came to Portugal with only a place to stay in the first city, and (gasp) I didn't have a packing list for the trip. This is probably the first trip I have gone on *ever* in my adult life where I didn't have a packing list. Guess what? I didn't forget anything! At least nothing I am missing or remember. I also started packing for Burning Man 6 days ahead of time. Typically I start 6-7 weeks ahead of time. The difference though is in my response to that. Normally I would get into a bit of a panic and go into overdrive in a mad flurry of packing and organizational activity. This time, I didn't care. I mean theoretically I did, and I would say to myself that I'd better get my act together. But emotionally I didn't care at all - if I had I would have moved faster. Right? Right. I do feel like I need another month off though. I had so little time between travels and it was so packed that I wasn't able to really do the relaxing thing. I know, cry you a river. Although I was able to spend a solid 4 weeks going to the climbing gym every day and that for me was most enjoyable. That may very well be my definition of relaxing. I also went back to the ceramics studio and started working again really for the first time in a year and a half. That was really hard - I have no idea why but my being did not want to be there working again, so I had to start working on completely different forms than I was previously working on and that seemed to go over well with myself.

The trouble with this kind of travel is that I have never seen any of these places before, so I feel compelled to cram in every single item in the book I can possibly fit in. Relaxation is not an option. I cut myself some slack at night and don't force myself to go out, but daytime is chock full of tourist activities. I feel like in order to really let myself enjoy a place I would need to live there for a minimum of 3 months (if I were unemployed). Which brings me to the resolution of my second issue - what to do about my living situation. As some of you know, I was wanting to move to NY, and this 5 month break was my response to that - to try to figure out if I really wanted to move or not. I figured travel would give me a different perspective on that. It has! So far as I can tell, I don't want to move to NY, or anywhere else in the US for that matter. I do want to move to Europe though. Not so strongly that I will go about doing it as soon as I return, but it will be in the back of my mind and instruct future decisions that relate to my whereabouts. I don't see myself as a career ex-pat, but I would love to spend several years over here. I think the culture would be very nurturing for an over-worker like myself and hey, free health care!