How to deal: loosing touch

     Ever since my six month journey around South America, I have been ever evolving as a person. That trip awoke me in a way that I wasn’t expecting, and my life has been slowly changing for the better ever since. I am learning to focus on things that are important to me, instead of wasting so much time not living in the moment. A huge part of learning is also failing. I’m currently trying to stay on task and save as much money as I can so that I can travel again next Winter (hopefully for a few years!), however I find myself getting lost and veering off course every now and again.

     Next year, and foreign countries both seem so far out of my grasp sometimes that I’m not sure if it is worth it to work so hard right now. Maybe I should focus on making a life for myself here? Focus on making friends here instead of keeping in touch with those from my past? Go back to school? Get a “real” job? Maybe I shouldn’t spend all of my time planning and thinking about future trips that seem lightyears away?

     Writing tonight has made me come across so many pictures of my trip that I hadn’t looked at in a while. There were a few certain pictures that literally made my face light up, and I could feel butterflys in my stomach. I remember this familiar feeling while looking out the plane window as my plane flew into Cusco exactly a year ago this week. It is amazing how pictures can help you relive so many emotions, and memories fly around your head, making you let go of any doubt you had. The thoughts that maybe this isn’t that path for me flew out the window the moment I saw a picture of my class from Aldea Yanapay, and remembered how eager they were to learn, and how humble and thankful they were to have a school, and to have us there teaching them. This is exactly how I want to feel for the rest of my life. There is nothing that school or a regular job could teach me, that is greater than that you learn from traveling. Experiencing culture and being with real people in real places, that is exactly what I long for. If a year has already passed since leaving Miami last year, another year will surely go back just as quick. For now, I will just have to keep looking at my pictures, and reading my journals every time I start to doubt myself and veer off of my course. It will all be worth it in a year.

xx SLW