Friday, November 29, 2013

Crossroads

Life has a funny way of throwing you signs to interpret every now and then. I'll start from a month back.

I passed a symbolic milestone in my life about a month ago by travelling with a girlfriend for the first time in my life. My girlfriend at the time, Sheena, and I took a four day trip to Las Vegas. Nothing crazy or time heavy, just a nice little vacation for the both of us. It was a great time, and I'll write up a review of it later. Unfortunately the week after we returned we decided we want different things in life and decided to go our separate ways. It's funny how you can look back at events later on and notice certain things one might interpret as a sign, namely how I never blogged about that trip when we were there, or immediately afterward. I'm not exactly what it means to me now, but it almost feels like I couldn't connect the spirit of this blog to that trip, like things had a way of working themselves out. Travel has had a funny way of telling the truth for me, as everything I've experienced on my journey has been guiding me on a path I cannot explain. And if that was truly the case and things weren't meant to be, I care about that woman a ton and I'll always have a place in my heart for her.

Another thing happened just prior to that, when I decided this March seemed to be a good time to take a trip to Chile. I've always wanted to see South America, the weather would still be warm, and my schedule jived with taking a trip during that time period. A few days after deciding that was where I was going to go, my friend and fellow travel companion during the Philippines and New Guinea texted me to tell me he was flying out on January 1st with his fiancee to start a journey through South America, and would be flying out of Santiago at the end of March. That was proof enough to me that Matt and I will always have that connection through travelling. I'll throw in a little back story on Matt to end this paragraph. He met his fiancee, Justine while travelling through Australia. Justine, who is Australian, later moved to Canada to be with Matt, and a short while later they were engaged. They're a couple you can look at and tell immediately they're a perfect match, and I very much look forward to travelling with them in a few months.

Perhaps one of the biggest signs, and blatantly so, was a couple weeks ago when I got a message from an old friend from Vancouver, Shaun. He basically summed up a dilemma to me in these words: I've always had money, I've always had a cute girl, but I've realized I haven't lived a day in my whole life. He came to me for advice on picking up leaving everything behind to travel. In that instant one of my greatest missions in life had been accomplished: to impress upon somebody the power of travel. It gave me so much gratification to know that I've inspired somebody, even just one person, by the decisions I've made in life. What it also threw at me was the question of where my life is going. I came back from my trip almost a year and a half ago with a new outlook on life, vowing I wouldn't get caught in the consumer system of work and spend, and that I would be back on the road and travelling by the next summer, possibly going to school in Indonesia. Obviously events along the way changed that. I got a job that makes good money and could possibly be a great opportunity, I met Sheena, and now I might have an opportunity to buy a house. It's very hard to avoid becoming entangled in that system while it's all around you, but I'm not sure it's what I want. I've come to quite a crossroads in my life; I'm nearing 30 years old, the age where society demands you buy a house, get a wife, have kids, and build a career. We'll see where life takes me in these next few months.

Shaun will start his journey right away, I might have to wait a while for my next one.