Whisked Away by Whims

I sidle back in. 

You glance up.

But you're cool. You're chilled. You don't make it weird.

It's been over a year since we last saw each other. So much has happened in that time. Am I the same person? Are you? You wonder whether those questions even have meaning in a world where memory is constructed and time is an illusion. (You heard that on a podcast and think it sounds deep.)

You stare at your browser. It stares back. Nietzsche was right. Except that there are more cat videos.

Our eyes meet, just for a second...

THEN I YELL AT YOU IN ALL CAPS ABOUT MY LIFE! BECAUSE THAT'S THE SORT OF PERSON I AM!

HELLO!

(Image from David Tennant News but also literally everywhere.)

I've been wanting to blog for a while. For a weird and tumultous year of my life, all my time and energy went to roller derby. It was great and I met all sorts of wonderful people, but now I go to sleep earlier. And have time to do other things. And don't have so many bruises. I'll always value the time I spent at derby. But sleep is so great.

And now I'm back. Largely because I have travel plans again!

I had just about resigned myself to spending my adult life never having time or money to travel, when a gap between jobs offered the one, and the promise of a higher salary the other - so it took me about half a second to make up my mind. Well, more or less.

On Friday, I was offered a new job.
By Saturday, I'd decided to go to Zanzibar.
On Sunday, I figured I'd just go to Knysna and stay in a treehouse.
Then on Monday, I read about Budapest.

I booked tickets before my whims had a chance to whisk me off to anywhere else.*

Well, almost. I did sneak in a detour via Vienna. And probably Bratislava. But I don't know yet, because I'm being spontaneous.**

So here I am again.

I blog as much for my own memory as for the attention from the internet, so upcoming travel struck me as a good opportunity to put pen to paper (mash fingers on keyboard) again. I'm disappointed that I didn't blog my grand South African roadtrip with Hannah last January, nor my Namibian adventure with my dad a few months later.

These adventures were good adventures.

But now that I'm going to be travelling alone again, and somewhere where there's wifi,*** I'll be documenting it. Probably in my usual hyperbolic way. Will I keep it up? Who knows. I think we've established that I'm an unreliable narrator. Or at least an inconsistent one.

But for now, here you are, and here I am. Just a girl, standing in front of the internet, SHOUTING AT IT ABOUT HER LIFE.

HELLO.


* Whisked Away by Whims sounds like a way to die in Gloom.
**Actually I have a travel Trello and a travel budget spreadsheet. But besides that.
***I was in the middle of nowhere in Namibia for the peak of the Strexcorp arc in Welcome to Night Vale. I sat by my phone for four hours to download that episode. FOUR. HOURS.