I’m almost half-way to 33 and everyone’s having babies, and Scott and I are starting to think about that ourselves. And I guess that sort of thing makes you consider your life and what you’re doing with it. And after devouring National Geographic’s travel website, longing with a fierce intensity to see with my own eyes the awe-inspiring wonders it portrays, I realized something: I don’t travel enough.
I mean, I knew this. If you asked me what I’d like to do more of, the answer is always: travel, but looking at pictures of all these places brought tears to my eyes, along with this clawing fear in my core that I would never get to see it for myself. I know you can’t see the whole world, I know that. But I have seen so damn little of it, and mostly places that I have a firm point of reference for – foreign, but not that foreign.
But I look at the things I’ve decorated my office with… there’s my college diploma which I haven’t quite managed to hang up, and then on the walls there’s two paintings of the beach that I got in Antigua, a colorful mask from my trip to western Mexico, 3 Quexicoatl masks – one from ChichenItza, one from Tulum, and one my friend brought me from Guatemala, a papyrus of Bast that my best friend brought me from Egypt, a mask from Singapore than my parents brought me, a long Jamaican face (along with the good luck beads the man gave me when I bought it), my other leather mask that I got in a gift shop in Barbados, a mermaid fetish a friend brought me from New Orleans, and photographs from Switzerland and Seattle. There are three things on my wall – three total – that are not related to travel: my signed photo of Harrison Ford, my award for Best All Around Girl for the BHS class of ’95, and Moon Baby, a piece of art I won at a silent auction supporting Zach Scott Theater. These are my cherished things that I have chosen to surround myself with, the things that provide the most inspiration in my sanctuary. Even for my walls, I chose a soft, earthy green and did a finish on it that reminded me of woven bamboo. I obviously wanted my office to take me somewhere.
Now travel is expensive, and that’s a big issue. And people say all the time, “Oh, it’s not that much,” but when getting airfare across the ocean starts at over $2000, well, I’m not sure I share their definition of “not that much.” I know it’s a priority issue, but I can’t have 100% my own priorities when I’m married, and saving for the future is important, as is paying for our house and…and…and… the eternal and.
But the fact remains that if I don’t get out and be in other places with other people, and see and eat and walk their streets and touch their spot on the planet, when I look back on my life, I will feel like I failed. I can never get published, and I will be disappointed, but not feel like I failed. I would love to have a family, but if for some reason Scott and I can’t, I will not feel like I failed. Hell, I would love to get my house in order and keep it clean for two days in a row, and I feel like I kinda fail every day for not doing that, but not on a global cosmic, life path sort of way. Just in a… minor personality disorder sort of way. I don’t want a vacation – I have no desire to sit on a beach or ski down a mountain or get on a cruise ship (unless it’s taking me down the Amazon). The world has this; Mila Zinkova (who took the photographs) went there. That means I can, too.
If you see me, don’t encourage me. I think that would upset me; definitely don’t tell me “well, if you just…” This is something that if I fix, I need to fix on my own. You’re welcome to remind me of my cats and how they would hate it if I was gone all the time (that actually works better than finances to calm my wanderlust). But I do post this here as a statement to the world that I have life goals that I have been ignoring, and I need to fix that.