Travel With Me

Travel with Me

It is my impression that it must be severely annoying to travel with me. I work a full day, I read a lot, and I take a lot of notes. I take photos of everything so that I can publish them and I put myself in situations that will potentially give me something to write about.

In all, the way I travel is very unnatural, not for much pleasure, and is full of solitary work. I do not know how anyone can stand traveling with me.
————–
Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
in Brooklyn, New York City- November 23, 2008
Travelogue — Travel Photos
————–

My dream is to someday have a partner to keep me in line, keep me balanced, and also take an active part in the silly little projects that I am trying to make a living off of. I have an idealic notion of a travel companion who will get equally excited about writing articles, making websites, and, hopefully someday, making documentaries; someone that I can share notes with and work on common projects; someone to create something with that will make me proud.

I like doing projects, but they are difficult to do alone while in the constant presence of someone who looks upon them with an odd sort of hairy eyeball. My friends tend to think that writing on the internet is pompous and borderline corny, that striving to write and publish articles is a waste of time, and that I should just sit on the beach with them and enjoy the sunset.

In many ways they are right.

I think it is annoying for people to travel with me.

I try to include my travel companions in what I do, I try to work in a partnership, but this has never really worked out. This is alright, I do not want to force anybody into doing something that they do not want to do, but I know that it is going to be very difficult for a person to sit idle, watching me working happily and mentally absorbed in my projects. This would annoy anyone. I am annoyed with just thinking of myself sitting smug at my computer and smiling at the lines that I write across the screen.

“Ahh,” I say to myself, “What a nice line” [smile, smile]. If I could take my fingers off of the keyboard and punch myself, I would. But I don’t, I really like what I am doing, regardless of how much time I put into it, regardless of how many other things I could be doing. I CHOOSE to do this work. I like interviewing people, writing, and doing backgroud research for stories. This is fun for me, and I am trying hard to make a living at it – $15 a day.

But it is difficult for me to to do this when I know that someone wants my attention. It makes me feel really bad. I hate going back to a hotel at night and jumping on the comnputer when my partner wants me to jump into bed. So the result is that I usually find myself stuck in between two poles: I am pushed by on by my passion for my projects and pulled by my passion for another person. I am left in a very divided circumstance. Traveling with someone means seeing them for most of the day, everyday; it is difficult to feel divided like this all day long. I very often feel as if I have to choose between my projects or being with another person, as it is too hard to half-ass both.

A palm reader in Chile once told me that I am like a bulldozer. This is true. If I want to bash into a brick wall, I will wake up at 6AM everyday and bash myself into it until nightfall. I have the gift of being able to focus on a task and have the determination to complete it. But this “gift” is severly double sided, as it makes me very difficult to be around. I know that it is annoying to travel with me.

I know that I have no sense of balance. I have a love for extremes and delight in the fact that I tend to fall way on one side of the line or the other. I either work hard all day long or I don’t work at all.

90% of all the people that I have ever met just want to sit on the beach. I admire this approach towards life more than what I can say. How I love the idea of just sitting on the coast, smoking my pipe, and doing nothing. I think this is how most people go through life, but I find this very difficult to do. At the end of the day I know that I have an ingrained abhorrance for being idle – I just cannot do it.

I write “Walk Slow” as more of a reminder to myself than to anyone else.

If I bash my head up against a wall all day long and achieve what I want, I go to bed happy. I feel good. This is stupid. I cannot believe that I feel this way and I cannot believe that I want to spend my life in this fashion. Who wants to sit in front of a computer screen? Who wants to work? How can I look back on a day of chugging out words, inactive, inside, and alone and call it a good day? What a stupid way to live.

I am annoyed to travel with me.

But I know how to make myself happy.

I do not want to be great; I do not want fame; I do not want money. I just want to be happy at what I do and have what I do make me happy.

Links to previous travelogue entries:
Donate Money to Africa
Traveler Re-Entry and Reverse Culture Shock
Educational Autobiography