Live Life, Part II

Back again! Where was I?

The only trick that seems to work for me is to periodically reinvent myself. Now is one of those periodic occasions. I am starting life over again from scratch. I haven't grown particularly fond of my new home, but I'm going to start loving it here. I am discarding all of my local acquaintances thus far, coworkers aside. I'm going to find what I have to do to make my life here worth living.

This coming Sunday, I want to attend an all-Spanish church service. I want to keep doing that each week, until I can think in Spanish like I used to back when I was in high school. I am going to start giving more to charity and helping around the community. I am going to do whatever it takes to get out of this rut I'm in.

BAM!

Live Life, Part I

It's been a while. I've thought about a lot of different things to write in this post, but I think the most important thing I've come to realize is that I don't know everything. As a matter of fact, I know very little. I don't even know myself all that well, or I might have made vastly different decisions over the course of the last 18 months or so.

The worst part of it is that I've realized that I cannot change the way the world is. I wish I could, but I'm not strong enough.

To be continued.

Empty Post

I'm going to travel the world.

I've struggled mightily to find something to talk about for this first entry. I debated bringing up work, school, relationships, and a whole host of other topics, but I decided it would be better to allow some of those other things to wait for another day. Right now, I want to talk about travel.

Growing up, I don't think I ever saw myself as the type of person who might someday venture to travel the world solo, but that's precisely what I would like to do most right now. Traveling alone to San Francisco this summer really helped me to reach that conclusion, although world travel was probably one of the last things on my mind at the time. I loved every minute of my journey out there, and would gladly have stayed, if I'd only been given a reason to. Life had other things in store for me at that moment, however, which is what ultimately led me to return to my home back east.
 

Fresh out of college, the experience of living and working these last few months has really made certain things apparent to me that weren't before. I realized, for instance, that I don't particularly wish to be anchored down in any particular place. I don't think I would really need to have a wife or kids to be happy in life. I will allow for the possibility of those things at some point down the road, of course, but I'm not going to lose sleep worrying about when I'll find someone right for me. I have encountered a few too many dead ends in the love game to continue to care about that sort of thing, which is ultimately why I'm channeling so much more of my energy into this world travel agenda now. I probably won't meet anyone who's really compatible with me here in the USA, anyway, so traveling abroad as often as possible seems all the more logical.

Where, then, am I planning to go?

For starters, I want to hit up Brazil. I have been fascinated with Brazil for many years, but it was only recently that I resolved to actually make the trip any time within the foreseeable future. There is so much to see and do in Brazil that I literally can't come up with anything even closely resembling a "top 10" list. Just read the Wikipedia pages for São Paulo or Rio de Janeiro, for instance, to see how much there is to do and see just in those two cities!  

Jesus is my homeboy, and He's Rio de Janeiro's homeboy, too.

There is much more to be seen in a country as large as Brazil, of course. Tell me you wouldn't love to see this place, for instance. Sure, I'd have some catchup work to do in terms of learning the language, but with an extensive background in Spanish (back in high school, there were times when I was semi-fluent), and some exposure to both French and Italian, I don't anticipate that it would be difficult to pick up enough Portuguese to get by on during a visit, and it'd probably be a really fun language to study.

Next on my list is Chile. Surprised? So am I. I've always found images of the Chilean Andes to be breathtaking, though, and I am equally enchanted by the sights of Chile's Pacific coast.

Third, I'd like to see South Africa. Sure, it's got a reputation as being one of the more dangerous countries on earth, but that's just all the more reason to go and see the place while I'm young and single =) Cape Town is beautiful and consistently draws the largest amount of tourist traffic on the African continent, and it's quite a bit safer than Johannesburg, so I would probably spend the majority of my time around the Cape, anyway.

It would also be cool to see Spain. India would be awesome, too. Oh, and Japan... and Australia... and New Zealand! xD you get the drift. It's not cheap to travel, but then again, it isn't cheap to start a family. That's part of the reason why I'm in no rush to marry and have kids, though. I'd prefer to wait until I've seen the aforementioned list of countries to start thinking seriously about the prospect of bringing another on board for the rest of my journey. It boggles my mind to look around and see some of my friends and colleagues getting married at 23, 22, 21, or even younger. I wish them all luck, but the harsh reality that some (if not most) of them can expect to be divorced within a few short years will not stray far from my statistically-inclined mind. Right now, all I'm looking to do is get the most out of my active years.

Just you try and stop me.