It's 12.33 am and I had intended to go to bed at midnight. My flight leaves at 6 am, which means waking up at the ungodly hour of 4 am. But I'll have about 30 hours of travel time to catch up on sleep before I arrive in Denpasar Friday night at 11 pm local time, just in time to get a good night's sleep. I'm a little sleep-obsessed. But, my bags are packed and the iPod is loaded and I seem to have done almost everything on my list...
Background to the trip: Just finished a seven year slog toward a PhD in Anthropology and immediately stepped off the academic track into the space of I-don’t-know-what-I-want-to-do-with-my-life. Moved from Southern California back to the New England town where I grew up. Survived the heartbreak of a long, protracted, and painfully drawn out end of a love I thought would last and all of the concomitant emotional fall out. Lost the ability to distinguish between hope and denial for a good ten months. Have some meager savings derived from money left by my grandmothers. Have tons of student loan debt, but let’s not dwell on that. Have been telling myself that if I finished the dissertation and was still standing, I’d go somewhere fabulous and far-off, like, say, Bali, even if it meant I’d come home broke.
Bali was on the table before I read Liz Gilbert’s amazing and beautifully written book, Eat, Pray, Love (also known as a love letter to heartbroken single thirty-something women who love to travel), but the book helped seal the deal. For the past six months, I’ve been dreaming of somewhere green and warm, lush foliage, moist humid air, the scent of the earth, tropical birds and flowers, turquoise waters just beyond the green hills. And despite the chorus of voices--both inside and outside my head—-that tell me that I am Irresponsible. That I Should Get A Real Job. Achieve Things. Save Money. Settle Down. Despite them all, I bought a plane ticket to Bali and then to Thailand. A Hindu island to do yoga and other things, a Buddhist country to learn how to meditate and to practice sanuk (it has something to do with having fun with everything you do).
I am so Lucky. Thank you, grandmothers.
It is tempting to put a truckload of expectations onto this trip: to figure out what to do with my life, or at least next; to inventory my skills and interests and come up with the perfect job; to finally get over the breakup; to get distance from grad school and all the painful stuff related to 2 ½ years spent writing a dissertation that still makes me shudder; to stop doubting myself; to silence the negative thoughts in my head; to stop being so hard on myself; to create world peace and put an end global warming; to find love; become a dewa-raja; exude the serenity of a Buddha….the list goes on and on. But I think I will just start with being open, enjoying, and having a sense of wonder.
