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It’s hard to say where I am at the moment. I know I’m in the
wonderful Paihia, New Zealand. Although apart from that geographical fact I’m
pretty much in some sort of liquid fluid state. I’m working now for the first
time in 6 months, doing a job for half the pay that I usually got and having to
work 60 hour weeks to get a decent pay-check behind me.
I’m thankful to have a job where I work outside and get exercise,
but the hours really eat up into my ability to experience things or to travel.
Travelling at the moment is the very thing I’m not doing, I’ve been stuck in
the same place now for 2 months, I’m a quarter into my New Zealand stay and I
haven’t even seen 1/8th of the country. My feet are starting to get
itchy, not due to poor hygiene, but more wanting to get out and run around
again. The American leg of my tour was an absolute blast; it was fast paced and
jam packed. I often would wake up and not know which town I was in. Now I know,
quite firmly where I am. I did crazy things like travel to other cities because
there was a party going on that night, or climb a mountain because it was
looking at me the wrong way and I wanted to get to the top and punch it in the
summit.
I was a loner, I had people who travelled with me, but in
the end after a couple of weeks I was back to square one. Matt alone, trying to
find the next group. Since I’ve been in NZ I’ve had pretty much the same group
for a month. It actually feels like I’m waiting for them to move so I can. This
is the thing that perturbs me most. After being independent, single minded and impetuous,
I’m returning to the same old mould. Work, drink with friends, go the bed.
People ask me if I’m starting to get homesick or if I’m just
upset that certain people from the group have left, maybe that’s why I want to
run again. It’s not that, I’m the opposite of home sick. Paihia is fast
becoming a home, I know the local people and they know me. I know where to go
and tell people who are new in town what to do. Home to me is the nemesis to my
travels. Home is what happens when the adventure stops. Once I get back to
that, it feels like there’s no more dreams, no more horizons. It’s just the
eventual plod towards that terrifying mortality that certainty of death and
taxes.
It’s not going to happen tomorrow or the day after tomorrow,
but I get the feeling that my days in Paihia are marked and it’s counting down
to the time where I tear up these burgeoning roots and keep moving till the
talons of inevitability shackle me down and bring me back to the start.
