A Brief Guide to Jetlag and Solo Travel

Get on a plane to Sydney, then Cairns. Watch Frozen but also way too many installments of the Conjuring series. Deplane. Wonder why you're holding all of your tension in your shoulders.

Try to hail an Uber. Fail to notice that your cellular coverage isn't great at the airport, so wonder why the only available Uber is something called scUber, a $3,000AUD Uber-sponsored sea trip to the Great Barrier Reef. Wonder how you could possibly board a ship from the airport. Be grateful that you are headed to the reef for one-tenth the cost on Saturday. Finally find enough data to hail an Uber.

Find the Airbnb. Realize there is no key in the front lockbox. Walk around the block to use the electronic gate. Finally drop your barely-holding-it-together rucksack on the couch and head for the shower. Realize that the shower head only stays up if it's pointed straight out. Realize that the slightest move turns the water freezing cold. Appreciate the shampoo and conditioner bars gifted to you by your sister-in-law. 

Go to the grocery store. Notice that there is a US-emulating breakfast cereal aisle, but the only brands available are Nestle and Kellogg. Talk yourself through the moral dilemma of choosing between patronizing Nestle (and the problematic bottled water industry) and buying Kellogg (when John Harvey Kellogg was a huge enormous creep.) Decide that modern Kellog cereals would have mortified the late John Kellogg, who (among other things) stole the concept of granola from someone else...but ultimately purchase an Australian brand of granola instead. Also buy TimTams. 

Get some work done. Be relieved that work is still a resource because you rolled into Australia on fumes from your Icelandic account. Be thankful that Iceland has a responsible tax structure and you don't have to worry about Iceland anymore.

Go to bed early. Before that, post one last Instagram from Singapore and watch old episodes of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Sleep fast. Have a super strange dream. Blame it on your airplane movie selections.

Repeat, with different nouns, every 3-15 days for five months. Realize that you do the most, and you're so fortunate, and that you'll probably turn out alright.

Happy travels. 

Tropical Beach, Okinawa, Japan

The Switch

I'm writing a list of cliched and ridiculous titles for a book that either I'll never write or you'll never read, including:

Always the Diplomat: From Campaigner to Advocate

Advocacy: Off the Campaign Trail

Advocating for Diplomacy

Campaigning for Diplomacy

Campaigning for Advocacy

Advocating for...Campaigns?

...and every iteration of that.

If you recognize these words, then you probably know where I'm going with this. Well...if you recognize these words then you probably speak English, but if you recognize these words as a collective, then we're probably on the same page. Also, I've been asked by a dear friend to write again; to write about something invoking and spiritual and true to me. Today I'm in a trendy, open-concept cafe in the Harajuku district of Tokyo with nothing but time on my hands, and I finally have something to write about -- something of which I've been suspicious for a while. A post-medication personality change.

Now, I don't know how to really write about this because I'm not sure if it's really true that the meds I take can change or have changed my personality, or if it's just circumstantial. Simply put, I couldn't determine beyond a reasonable doubt that it's the meds. Can't prove it. No judge would rule in my favor, and I don't need that kind of validation anyway. It simply is or isn't, and I'll probably never know.

All I know is that at some point over the past five years or so, I switched from a Myers-Briggs ENFP (Campaigner) to a Myers-Briggs INFJ-T (Advocate.) Both exist under the Diplomat category, so it's not a super dramatic swing; my N and my F have stayed, as intuition and feeling are probably pretty hard-wired into my system. Switching from a P (perceiving) to J (judging) seems about right, and the T (turbulent) is pretty unsurprising...but flying over to the I from the E is something I never thought I'd do.

In retrospect, though, figures my salty, singer-songwriter self would end up more of an Alanis Morissette than a Will Smith. 

From being and being perceived as extroverted for most of my life, it's been a true adjustment to first realize and then lean into my deep, wide introversion. There was a very real time, during my adolescence and young adulthood especially, when I was the voice for the group; outgoing, loquacious, inviting. My last years on stage, literally and perceptively. 

But now I associate that extroversion with...almost simplicity. Not that extroverts are simple; often extroverts are just as complex as introverts. My extroversion, though, was an expectation and somewhat of a bandaid. I used it to surround myself with friends and to play into the "enthusiastic, passionate team player" mantra we robotically repeat before job interviews in the US.

This ideology I now associate with aggressive, billionaire-sustaining capitalism and systemic evil, but anyway. Another topic.

My point is, this doesn't reflect who I turned out to be. Instead, I turned out to be more discerning, more critical, and more observational. 

Due to the amount of time I spend traveling by myself, this change could both be surprising and unsurprising. Unsurprising because (duh) I'm perfectly alright traveling by myself and spending time in my own company, but even that has its concrete limits. Surprising because it's perhaps then difficult to understand how I combat loneliness in a strange place.

If I'm not actively making friendships, then how do I have so many wonderful friends all over the world? 

Because somebody else is almost always the catalyst.

I make friends with extroverts, or extroverted introverts, or whoever feels like saying hi to me. I am more than happy to engage in a conversation with most anyone. I often put myself in an inviting position; whether it's opening the curtain surrounding my bunk bed in a hostel dorm, sitting at a bar, joining a table in the common room...in anticipation that somebody will say hello or invite me in, and they almost always do. 

Apart from the benefit and inclusion of having a new friend and new travel pals with whom I can explore a new place, it also takes the burden of commitment off of me. When I need time alone, it isn't me who has invited me along, so to speak. I can break off, I can rest, I can work, I can spend time by myself in a flower garden which, of late, is my absolute favorite thing to do. 

I still honor my commitments to the very end, but I'm not in charge of the group's social calendar. I have no desire to do that, but I'm more than happy to participate and contribute. 

I remember noticing the switch before I started taking meds, in the sense that I felt a noticeable spike in my social anxiety. I was a little bit homeless at the time, though, so that's probably more to do with the stress and trauma of getting by than anything else.

But then, when I started to get used to the regimen of medication I also noticed an implosion in my head and chest. A concavity that wasn't necessarily empty, but turned more inwardly than normal. It wasn't a bad thing, but again, surprising.

But looking back, it's a far more accurate descriptor for who I am now. That's why I flipped through the test again last night and ended up with INFJ-T, The Advocate, the rarest of them all which, I admit, I quite like. 

As self-reflective and introspective as I am, it has taken me quite a while to take the test again for further evidence of something I had already suspected, known. It isn't really that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things, but I spend so much of my time trying to understand and reconcile myself that it's a very big deal for me. And with that, I'll leave you with a picture of me doing my favorite thing of the season.

Get you somebody who looks at you like I look at flowers. 

Saltwater

They say that saltwater is very healing, that if you dip your cuts into the stinging water they close faster. But saltwater also dehydrates. It leaves you thirsty but keeps you covered. Something like that.

Don't tell Adrienne, but I dipped my hair in saltwater today. I clogged the sink with a washcloth and looked up the salinity of the Gulf of Thailand and did the math incredibly incorrectly and filled the basin with a haphazard, hand-wavey, eyeballed cup full of table salt for the water and I put in my head. 

Sidebar: for someone who does calculus for a living, I can sure screw up an arithmetic problem. I'll blame it on jetlag and hormones and stress because I can and that's what I do every day anyway.

Anyway.

Most of the world and most of us is water, and most of that water is salty. Can't get by without it, can't cry without it, can't sweat, can't bleed. And my Fraggle Rock curls look their best when they've been soaked in grimy saltwater.

While in Tonsai Beach, I spent most of my time by myself under the water. I went into a cave and met a friend called Hanna, and then we went into the water together. After that, we hiked to the top of the craggy rocks and the saltwater ran out of our pores in single-file rivers. I couldn't get enough of it and at the same time, I couldn't get rid of it fast enough. I was saturated.

I drowned my phone splashing in the saltwater at midnight, looking for crabs so that the local climbing instructor could put them to sleep by rubbing their bellies, and dodging beach spotlights to search for luminous plankton. We didn't find any, but I soaked my shorts and then the phone in my pocket lost one functioning speaker. Luckily, it had come with two.

Then in Otres Beach, I used the saltwater as a hideaway. This is because I couldn't sit on the lovely wooden swing, couldn't lie on the beach cushions, couldn't sit on the barstools without being touched or harassed or called out or bothered. I respect the hustle, but I can't help everyone and I can't relax when this is happening, of course. I found that the only way to hide from this was to run into the ocean; floating on my back and diving into the murkiness until the entrepreneurs had moved on.

Sometimes I would come back to the shore because there was a dog who lived nearby, and he liked to lean on me and lick the saltwater off of my face while we were battered by the breaking waves. And that onslaught was far more kind than the reality of the financial imperialism surrounding us or the women who wanted to rip out my leg hairs with thread.

But then one night, after we had established some sort of a dirtbag, misfit family in our jungle huts on the sand, we woke each other up during the wee hours to hunt for plankton again. Slipping out of swimsuits and shuffling bare-skinned into the warm saltwater, the motion of our fluttering fingers and toes set off a biological alarm within the clouds of tiny plankton.

It was like swimming in glitter. Every time we moved, the plankton set off their flashing, silent sirens. From the pictures I had seen, I didn't understand how dim or small or elusive they would be. I thought it would be more like the glimmering medusae of luminous jellyfish, congealing in an almost indistinguishable mess of slime near the mangroves and glowing blue against the moonlight.

But this was different. This was an open beach, swimming in stars. We could look up into the November sky above and then below, and see a similar phenomenon. Not physically, but empirically. 

We never had much luck getting the salt or sand out of anything while we were there, but I think that's what the artists call "aesthetic." Perhaps the thinly-veiled snobs would call it "charming," but it's what we called "affordable." Slipping through our fingers, the huts won't exist next month...but regardless of the uncontrollable things happening down in southern Cambodia, we got our rent's worth for our time on the sea.

They say saltwater is very healing, that if you dip your head underneath, there exists another world entirely. 

Whoever they are, I think they're right.

Let A Little Air In

There are a lot of things that I admire and respect about backpacking and hosteling communities, and a lot of things with which I could really get on board. One of those things is the book exchange.

At Schuler Books in Okemos, Michigan, USA I picked up a murder mystery from the used section. It was painfully clever and feverishly well written but I did not like it because it did not allow me to escape at all from my deepest pains and prayers. Nevertheless, I finished it and left it at a hostel in Hoi An, Vietnam.

Weeks later with my new friends that I met in Luang Prabang, Laos, I went to a small bookshop and bought a collection of essays by Robert Fulghum. You know, the guy who wrote All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. 

I am now on the island of Phuket in Thailand and I've finished that, and collected a new novel from my hostel here. I imagine I'll leave that somewhere in Cambodia, where I travel tomorrow, or possibly Malaysia if I dilly dally too much.

While Fulghum's essays sometimes exude what can be described in 2018 as the oversimplified opinions and adventures of a privileged white man, they were far ahead of their time for the 1989 publishing date. And I think he really is as genuine as anybody ever could be. I liked the essays, and they resonate with anybody who feels the muchness of their human spirit. 

On October 7th I was in northern Vietnam and I was a mess. I was in pain and didn't know how to deal with it, and I was afraid that I had lost some of the most important love in my life. On November 7th I was on a bus from Phuket Town to the place I'm sitting now, and I was also a mess. I was insecure and didn't know how to deal with it, and behaved so poorly and irrationally that I probably should have lost some of the most important love in my life.

But I didn't. Instead, I was given more love.

So after finishing up Fulghum's essays a few minutes ago, I am understandably emotional. In one of the final pieces, Fulghum tells the story of Hans Ludwig Babblinger from Ulm, a prosthetics craftsman who managed to build a makeshift hang glider and soar from the foothills of the Alps, where there are ample up-currents. 

But when the King came to Ulm and Hans was asked to demonstrate his flying skills, he unintentionally chose a location where there were heavy down-currents and ended up crashing into the river instead of flying. Of course, the church used his mistake as an opportunity to shame the sin of human pride, and Hans shut himself in and eventually died with a broken heart.

People can do that, you know. Die of shame. Because you can die of shame long before you ever physically die.

Except centuries later when Fulghum was riding on a hang glider himself, he thought of Hans and wished he could tell him that he had been rightful in his pursuit of flying. "Look," Fulghum wished he could say, "Look and be not ashamed. Man was meant to fly."

For me, the story is about shame and how it's a big liar that only knows part of the truth. As far as I can tell, none of us really know what to do with shame after we've exhausted ourselves talking and praying and doing and achieving and it still holds on. It's that rock in your chest that shows up when a dog doesn't trust you, or a child (who has never seen a white lady before) looks at your face with dread and cries. That feeling that says, wow, there must be something really wrong with me that only the purest creatures on this Earth can see.

I am feeling well, now. Biochemically, it's because whatever hormones have run their course for this go-around. Spiritually, it's because I've been shown the tremendous depth of how much I am loved.

And that love is deeper than my shame, which persists but so does the love. The shame leaves me exposed but the love wraps me in a blanket. The shame is suffocating, but the love lets a little air in.

So I hope that the book I left today finds its way into the hands of somebody who is tired and can find rest while reading it. Oh -- and I did find a dog who trusted me. Turns out, there are far more friendly dogs than not.

This floppy goof is called Lucky, and he's the best.