Sorry, this blog isn't for you.

So, this story seems to always start in a bar. 

I was enjoying a beer at the bar underneath my apartment, when I somehow stumbled on this blog. And you know, that’s also how it always starts. I start to read the past versions of me – the versions of me in specific moments in time in different time periods and different time zones.

 

I’ve come to realize this blog of mine, that I’ve now maintained for 10 years off and on, (sometimes really on, and recently a lot more off), is not really for you, dear reader. There was a time I was absolutely convinced I was never coming home and I was going to make this blog my sole income and just travel the world and tell people about it. What a lofty ass goal, right? But then, and I won’t dive too much into this, I fell into this weird groove of loving putting roots down, but also fighting the urge to pick up everything and anything and just get the hell out of dodge. But the more I write in this silly lil’ blog, the more I realize that this whole thing is selfishly, 100% for me. Yes, I try to make it a little entertaining (getting stuck in South African toilets, for example), maybe making it a little inspirational when I can (a link to one of my favorite posts) – but, at the end of the day, it really, truly, just exists in order for me to try to communicate with future me.

 

It’s like I’m building a time capsule that is so purposely un-buried that it begs for me to fucking crash into it. So, I guess that comes down to why I do it. Why do it at all if it really is just for my own self satisfaction?

 

Well, kids, here’s the deal. Let me go off the rails for a bit. Maybe you’ll connect, maybe you won’t, but it’s where I’m at and I want to write.

 

One of the toughest things I’ve found in life is to avoid measuring myself in my failures rather than my successes.

            

I wrote last time in Iceland how precious life is – how every moment is beautiful and tragic and all that jazz. Blah, blah, blah, right? And in most of life, I am annoyingly optimistic. But I do have the times, not a lot, where I start to measure the worth of my life in everything I don’t have. I feel like a lot of people do this, consciously and subconsciously.

            

I don’t have a wife and kids. I don’t own a home. I didn’t make it as writer. I didn’t end up traveling the world on this blog’s income. I didn’t get my podcast off the ground. And on and on. The dude just doesn’t get the girl in the end, you know? Super depressing stuff. (Edit: Also, I know some of these aren't "failures" necessarily. It just seems like it in society's eyes).

            

Although those moments don’t happen a lot, they are extremely powerful. It’s negativity bias – where we focus more on bad things than good, even when bad things are less frequent. And then we give the negative things more attention, and in a fucked up cycle, we then learn from and are influenced more strongly by negative shit than positive shit. 

 

And here I am, a THERAPIST now, and I still fall into that trap. It’s just so easy to spiral into that line of thinking.

 

But, okay, failed a lot of things. So what. 

I’m back in a bar, reading this blog and I’m like fuck me.

This isn’t past me, this IS me.

So I buy that non-refundable ticket to London, because why not?

Royal shit is pretty awesome, not going to lie.

I wrote these blogs to encourage me when those thoughts of failure become a little too much. Travelling makes me feel powerful, like I can do the impossible. It reminds me that I’ve already done the impossible. 

 

It reminds me of my successes – I do have a beautiful life. I do have a career I love and worked hard to be good  at. I do have a family that loves me as much as I love them. I do have friends that are the best of the best. I do have a roof over my head. I do have the luxury to travel the absolute world. And man, the more I think about it, my success list completely blows my failure list out of the water.

 

Travel reminds me of all the things I do have and what I have had and I start to think less of what I don’t.(Also take this all with a huge fucking helping of acknowledgment - this blog is the definition of a white, Western man writing about his privileges. And I know it’s a privilege that I’m travelling, for fun and adventure, when many cannot).

            

So, again, who is this blog for? 

I don’t think it’s to show the world “Oh hey, look at all these cool things I’m doing!” Maybe at one time it was. I don’t know.

What I do know is that I’m doing this blog for me. To remind myself how blessed I am to have the life I do.

To wake me up when I get complacent.

To set me on another adventure when the roots of life get too entwined.

 

Hostel life.

And, actually, fuck it. 

This blog is for you, too.

You aren’t your failures. Promise. (Edit: Okay, failures aren't actually bad. Really you are both your failures and successes and failures are important just as much as successes, but man, that's a whole other rant for another day...).

And maybe this will remind you to take an adventure when you can. And will remind you that you can do scary and impossible things.

Buy the non-refundable ticket somewhere.

I’ll save a seat for you at the bar when you arrive.