Category Archives: Now or Never

01/6/13

Beach Bums

1987_10151229098786025_1029000181_n[2]There is something universal about beach towns. If it weren’t for the palm trees, the motorbikes, the “gentlemen’s clubs,” the numerous tailors who will make you a tuxedo in less than 24 hours, and, oh yeah, the elephants, I could have sworn I’d been here before.

I’m not sure why that is… maybe it’s the walking back from the beach all sandy to a room with a fan working overtime. The familiar feeling of–despite all your best efforts–getting burned by the sun. (I swear I wore a hat, Mom!) Maybe it’s the other tourists that make it seem familiar. (Though I have definitely heard some languages here I have never heard before. Isaure and I were seated at a table next to a very large group of very loud, entitled young men yesterday, and we found ourselves guessing in whispered French what country might have had the misfortune to have produced them. Turkey? Kazakhstan? Egypt? Then we saw them again last night, whipping through the town on motorbikes at speeds much too fast to be safe for pedestrians. I suppose it’s good for us as we get older to see people who make youth seem so unattractive.)

Our second day in Koh Chang was very much like the first, except with the addition of a much-improved Khalid. We went straight to the beach (pausing only for Isaure to buy a small inner tube—which sent her somersaulting under the water the moment she sat on it. Being Isaure, she came up laughing.)

We had brunch at one of the seaside resorts. Their restaurant looks like something out of a Club Med brochure—ocean front terrace with white cotton tablecloths and handmade-looking wooden chairs.

We took another walk down the shore, past rope-and-wood swings over the ocean, some sand castles, an enormous, beautiful tree that created almost a hut with it’s low-hanging branches and made me wish once again that I knew something about botany, a local landmark called Porn’s (apparently a common Thai name) which looks exactly like the jungle tree house in “Swiss Family Robinson” and is therefore the place I am most excited to eat dinner.

Back on our beach, we ate a quick lunch then went back in the water and swam and floated and talked and talked. Then we sat on our towels and watched the sun set over the water. In Chiang Mai we saw almost no stars—we couldn’t figure out if that was because of light pollution or pollution pollution—but from the beach we could see thousands and thousands. I found myself wondering if they were the same stars we could see in Boston (I thought they should be, since we were in the same hemisphere), but I couldn’t find the Big Dipper. Khalid of course immediately pulled out his star-finding app, but the Big Dipper was not where it told us it should be. I spent the next few minutes turning in slow circles on the sand, trying to find stars that were not there.

11/26/12

Trigger: Pulled

I did it.

After weeks and weeks of dreading and debating when and where and how to do it, I finally told my bosses that I am leaving. Which is another word for quitting. Which sounds so… permanent.

I’ve really only ever worked at one place. My dream place. And I have a dream job at my dream place—making public television shows that are educational and really good and a lot of fun to work on. And I have worked there for almost eight years. It will be exactly eight years when I leave. That’s longer than I’ve done anything. That’s longer than people who can do multiplication have been alive.

So why am I going?

Because I dream of travel. Literally. I have a recurring dream that I am going on an amazing trip to multiple countries—never the same countries. And I always wake up feeling empty.

Not that I haven’t traveled already. I have. I’ve been to much (most?) of Europe, all of North America, three countries in South America and two countries in Africa. Which sounds very impressive if you don’t take into account that in reality I only spent a few hours in Brazil (I picked the flight with the longest layover possible, and went to considerable trouble of getting a visa so I could go out to dinner in Sao Paulo), maybe 10 hours in Uruguay, and approximately 10 minutes in Mexico (I walked across the border, got my passport stamped, and walked back). That’s the sort of thing you have to do when you only get 15 vacation days a year. And the more years went by, the more I was sure I didn’t want to die with only stories about trips I could have timed on a stop watch.

So I am chucking everything—dream job, dream condo, dream second job (people pay me to write stuff!)—and heading to Asia. I will be traveling for two months in Southeast Asia, then working for four in China, then traveling for another month. I plan to visit Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Malaysia, Singapore, Korea, and Japan. After that, if money permits, I will do some Spanish immersion in Central America.

I know I should be nervous, but I’m too busy being excited.

11/25/12

Me and Bobby McGee

My condo in its heyday

My condo is beautiful. It’s my baby. I bought it when it was brand new. I was the first person to open the cabinets, hammer nails into the plaster, fill the tub with bubbles. I even got to pick out the light fixtures. (Which was not easy for someone plagued with indecision!)

I lovingly decorated every square inch of it. I still find interior designs I painstakingly sketched out with colored pencils during the months that I waited for the financing to finally come through. I painted a 15-foot-long, 10-foot-high wall yellow all by myself. (Which, in retrospect, was not the brightest thing to do, since if I had fallen I could have lain there for days without anyone noticing.) I covered another wall with bold black-and-white fabric. I spent hours in Home Goods (the happiest place on earth.) I evaluated dozens of white curtains before settling on the right ones. My mother and I drove my father’s pick-up all over eastern Massachusetts picking up furniture painstakingly selected from Craigslist.

But I have now cheerfully sold nearly every stick of furniture. Next up: the condo itself.

As Janis Joplin sang, “freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”

Which is another way of saying that if you don’t want to be tied down, you need to sell all your crap.

It’s not easy. Not even a little bit. Not even for someone who had fantasies of being able to fit all her worldly possessions into the bed of a pick-up truck. (Even without my furniture, I am closer to filling a Mack than a pick-up. I blame the shoes.)

But I am determined to keep selling, donating, and tossing stuff I don’t need. And every time I get rid of something, I really do feel freer.

I think Janis would be proud.