A Life in Waiting

Not sure if this is a good thing or not, but apparently today I’m in a reflective mood.  I seem to be thinking about things a tad deeper than normal lately, not sure if it’s because of any particular pivotal moment or just because I’m too tired to do anything and to awake to sleep.  Well actually I probably could sleep right now, but as I just napped and need to go out in an hour or so, sleeping didn’t seem like a great option.  So ignore any typographical or grammar mistakes as I am in a bit of a daze right now and tend to stutter-write when I’m like this.  Stutter-write would be a term I just coined meaning to write the same word more than once in a row row since my hands are going faster than my mind can handle at the moment.

How does that Top Gun quote go?  You’re writing checks your body can’t cash, or something like that.  I sometimes feel like that quote suits me.  As I’m traveling and in new places constantly, I try to get as much in as possible.  Dinners, gatherings, whatever there seems to always be something going on and I don’t seem to know how to say no.  I don’t want to miss any of these amazing opportunities, but sometimes my body just can’t seem to catch up.  Not to mention that for the past days I have been suffering from the worst bout of allergies that I’ve ever experienced.  I rarely if ever have any allergy type symptoms but man I got hit hard this week.  Teary eyed, runny nosed and sneezing constantly.  I think it has to do with the fact that I’m staying in a beach house that was closed up for a few months and there’s a larger presence of dust and mold than most places normally possess.  So sleeping at night is a commodity that I don’t have much of these days.

Wow, staring at the screen again.  Perhaps I didn’t have as much to say as I thought.  I was told that the best way for a writer to break through writers block is to write down every thought in his head.  Which is what you’re seeing right now.  Well I’m filtering all the ones that might get me arrested or in trouble somewhere, but basically this is all my mind is capable of right now.  Must make you feel a bit smarter than me at the moment.  Hmm, so I suppose I was supposed to get inspiration from something I just typed?  Perhaps I haven’t written enough yet. 

Well going back to what I wrote earlier this morning, I am a bit disappointed in the lack of photos that I’ve taken.  Few contain me and surprising less contains other people.  Seems I only take  landscape photos.  I need to work on this.  But it’s hard for me sometimes.  Like yesterday for example, I was attending a very cool festival in Punta Umbria called Romeria.  It is the celebration of the patron saint of agriculture (I probably should know the name) and it is a village wide celebration.  It’s actually celebrated all over Andalucia, but I happened to be around for the Punta Umbria one. 

I had invited Antonio and Carmen (wow, a little out of sync here.  I haven’t written about my week with Antonio and Carmen yet in Malaga and Prado del Rey.  But oh well, you’ll piece it all together later.  Antonio and I were in Pueblo Inglís together and have become really good friends since) over to Punta Umbria as I have had a beach house all to myself for the past week (double wow.  I haven’t spoken about my time in Sevilla with Carlos and his super generous offer of letting me stay in his beach house indefinitely yet either).  Well regardless, they accepted and came for 3 days.  On the second day of their trip here, we went to this Romeria with an old school friend of Carmen’s and all of their friends.  Amazing time, even more amazing people.  I really felt as if I was a part of the core group of friends as I was included in everything, even though only a handful spoke English.  Shit, there was a point I was going to make here.  (pause)  (longer pause) 

Ah well.  As the longer pause represents almost a full day, I will wrap this up here as I don’t think I can reproduce the same feelings I had yesterday when writing.  So sorry for the incompleteness, but I hold no responsibility for it. 

As I am experiencing so many things daily, I struggle to find time to record my adventures.  It’s more important for me to really get as much as I can from this trip rather than to just take pictures and write about my day here.  I’m sure I should easily be able to do both, apparently I can’t.  The taking photos problem is a mixture of both lack of skill or eye, and simple forgetfulness.  As far as the writing is concerned, I need to be in the mood to write as it doesn’t come naturally to me.  I can’t just sit down every time I have a free moment and jot down my immediate thoughts, I need to somewhat prepare myself for it.  Although I am getting a bit better with it.

So I am now exactly one week behind on my writings, which doesn’t like much but it really is.  I’ve visited a dozen cities, slept in five different beds and met an uncountable number of new people in those seven days.  It’s rather overwhelming actually.  So I’ve gotten in the habit of doing a modified timeline with small notes on where I’ve been and some things I have done so I can remember back as best as possible.  See for me, every day is as important as the next and I don’t want to lose one.  Or thirty like what happened with the first half of this trip.  That all being said, I am currently sitting in a bed in Prado del Rey, a smaller city in Andalucía, Spain recovering from a typical Spanish evening that ended at six in the morning eating frozen pizzas.  So how about we travel back in time to a lovely place I call last week.

Well it is already the 9^th of January and I am way behind on updating this blog.  The problem lies with the fact that I keep trying to recollect all the things I’ve done so I can give the stories from the gaps in my posts, which I keep procrastinating about since I have a terrible memory.  So then all the new happenings are passing me by because I certainly can’t write about them in the wrong order.  So here it stops.  If I miss a large chunk of time, I will give a quick summary and move on.  I have too many things going on that I want to talk about and to constantly keep blowing them off is driving me crazy.  So here goes…

This is the last time related post from me. It has been eleven days since I was last able to sit down and get something written and this is a good thing. I have come to the realization that stressing for nothing. As much as I want to record what I am going through to get myself overseas, I need to actually get there. So this past week and a half I have been focusing on the task at hand and succeeding. So now that I have my biggest problem (mostly) solved, I can take a breath and recap what’s going on in Mikie-land.

For some reason I can’t get myself to sit down and write but I know I have to. There has just been so much going on that I feel overwhelmed by everything that writing gets thrown into the back seat. Not to mention the lack of time that I seem to have. I finally have my bike and registered in my name. So the next logical step would be getting it shipped to Europe. Feeling like I already had this basis covered, from the extensive amount of research and quote getting I had done a month or two earlier, I figured this would be a breeze. Hah! Of course not. Well now that the 3 main shippers I had been relying upon have either told me they can’t ship it or have doubled their rates, I’ve been on a tear to find a reasonable shipper. Apparently they don’t exist. The big boys don’t want to deal with shipping such a small shipment, and the little guys want to charge an arm, leg and even a kidney. So this little chore has taken up as much of my free time as I have.