Monday, 16 January 2012

The day I decided on adventure

It wasn’t really an auspicious day. It’s the Mayan Haab 8, Muwan' 14, the world is not ending, yet. Indeed a number of feng shui tools actually tell me it is ‘inauspicious’. It’s actually the 23^rd day of the twelfth month in the Year of the Rabbit. This is the day I chose to start. Start another journal. Ha, you thought I was going to say “journey”! Not all adventures start with walking… or a destination. Someone told me once the best type of adventure is when you start with no destination and no expectations.

Wondrous expectations! I often wonder why I have so much of this and so little input into the outcomes. I keep failing to meet them and once that happens much is left undone or half-baked. So my therapist says I should keep a journal. It doesn’t matter about the journey you take as long as you record how you feel and how your days have progressed. This will help you figure out how your expectations are formed and where they fall short or fall into a pit of darkness.

How many times have you heard a book, movie or a blog start with that line? “My therapist says I should keep a journal.” Does it trigger a sense that the author of the following text would be incomprehensibly Chomsky-esque or fatalistically Freudian? An absolute self-critique through shades of grey and darkness, filled with imaginary moments of illusory and imaginary happiness. An author, who through self-delusional, knows they’re witty by using literary techniques of alliteration, allegory and allusion. At least going through a checklist of the ones that can be identified and then combining them in to make an edifying text.

Well, I’ve always wanted to write but never found much in my own life to write about. Other people’s lives seem so much more interesting and filled with meaning and adventures. So I live vicariously through other people’s memories, photographs and tales over drinks at the local. Stalker-ish isn’t it? But modern technology makes this a seamlessly non-intrusive process. I’m facilitated by various providers, from blogs, discussion boards and Facebook. Other brands you would recognise as my fodder suppliers from Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr to Pinterest.

How does one begin to write? Burgeoning ideas of theoretical dissertations of identity examination comes to mind. Dissertation topics where you biologically dissect icons of popular culture and the emotive obsession that it generates could be a fun start. Then again, how does this make this journal different from any other pompous self-starter who emotes and states the world doesn’t provide a stage light? Literally, shooting off an opinion to cyberspace and expecting echoes of applause. Who or what does this serve? “How did my therapist think this would work?”

Looking at the travel photographs of one friend, I wonder at the audacity to travel to places like Laos on a whim. I consider myself whimsical. Indeed I'm much prone to flights of fancy and distractions.

It’s hard to picture the excitement of travelling when you have no wish to leave where you are. The novel aspects of landing on foreign soil is exactly that, foreign, at least to me.