You guessed it; I’m on the road again. I am actually in one of the few cool cities I get to travel to for work, but it’s cold and rainy outside and I really just don’t feel like boozing it up on a Tuesday night. So instead I am in an abandoned banquet room in the far reaches of the ninth floor daydreaming about other places.
My reading list of late has been full of travel memoirs – all vaguely similar, but yet so completely different. Yes, each one is about a young single woman (or a few of them) who decides to throw everything else away to travel in an effort to find themselves before facing some big obstacle – turning 30, graduation, getting over a relationship or simply being at peace.
Following The Lost Girls, which I have already wholeheartedly endorsed here, I turned to The Good Girl’s Guide to Getting Lost and have Wanderlust waiting in my Nook queue , while adding countless other my Goodreads “to read” list. The trend is so evident one of my friends sent me a message just to make sure I wasn’t planning to run off to the Congo any time soon.
I hadn’t thought about, but this doesn’t look so bad. Maybe I’ll add it to my list.
One of the common threads between the women in these books is an already deep-seeded love and appreciation for travel and adventure. Now I would like to think I am in the process of developing both, but it has been a long time coming and I have not come by it naturally.
My family did not do adventure growing up and we definitely did not do exotic travel. When I went to France with a group of classmates in high school, I was the first person in my family to get a passport. I was a junior in high school and it was just the second time I had been on an airplane. We also never appreciated what we had in our own backyard – I grew up 25 minutes from the beach and it was not until I could drive myself and later when I dated a surf instructor in college (The Badass) did I begin to revel in the ocean’s majesty.
Yes, I said majesty. Get over it.
My point is I did not grow up with the notion travel – and more so stepping out of one’s comfort zone – are necessary parts of life and I kind of resent that a little bit. My mother is very cautious and a kid has no choice but to absorb those reactions to things like heights, bridges, driving fast, oceans, planes, etc., and it has taken me a long time to realize I want to face all of those things with reckless abandon.
It’s a bit overwhelming to face at this point in life a—to learn all these ~ing skills and embrace the life they fit into.
But I am trying.
Because if my life is for rent and I don’t learn to buy, I deserve nothing more than I get because nothing I have is truly mine.
Sound familiar?
I had my iPod on shuffle the other day and Dido’s “Life for Rent” came on and it stopped me in my tracks and I had to listen again. And again. I remember getting the CD in college and reveling in this song, but it speaks to me a little differently now.
I haven't ever really found a place that I call home
I never stick around quite long enough to make it
I apologize once again I'm not in love
But it's not as if I mind
that your heart ain't exactly breaking
It's just a thought, only a thought
But if my life is for rent and I don't learn to buy
Well I deserve nothing more than I get
‘Cause nothing I have is truly mine
I've always thought
that I would love to live by the sea
To travel the world alone
and live more simply
I have no idea what's happened to that dream
‘Cause there's really nothing left here to stop me
It's just a thought, only a thought
But if my life is for rent and I don't learn to buy
Well I deserve nothing more than I get
‘Cause nothing I have is truly mine
If my life is for rent and I don't learn to buy
Well I deserve nothing more than I get
‘Cause nothing I have is truly mine
While my heart is a shield and I won't let it down
While I am so afraid to fail so I won't even try
Well how can I say I'm alive
If my life is for rent and I don't learn to buy
Well I deserve nothing more than I get
‘Cause nothing I have is truly mine
If my life is for rent and I don't learn to buy
Well I deserve nothing more than I get
‘Cause nothing I have is truly mine
Sound familiar?
It’s taking all I have not to run off to the Congo tomorrow. Or in 20 days. With my bag of travel books and the desire to write one of my own. With this in my head:
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