Been walking a lot. During the past two months I've had only two
weeks on which I didn't walk 70 km per week. Sometimes I walk with
a backpack, but mostly without. Last weekend I walked 50 km with
11 kg. That was a bit too much.
The idea is to walk the pilgrimage to Santiago over the summer.
I got the extra holiday for it, got the one way ticket, got shoes,
backpack. Hopefully have enough money.
It's been about twenty years since I was to Spain last time. At
that time as well it was an end of an era. I had challenged myself
to go for an exchange study there in order to get myself out of
one type of personality and into something new. It seem
appropriate to go back there now.
I figure I have lived several eras. There was the innocent era,
the broken era of cynicism and masochism, the era of awkward
exposure and over-reach, the era of art, poverty and narrow
horizons, the era of love and burnout. And now to something else.
Writing the eras down like that makes me realise that I have gone
backwards only once, if it counts to go back from innocense to
cynicism. Other than that it's all getting better in the big
picture.
The last trip to Spain was about getting rid of the cynicism and
self-loathing. It didn't really work at all how I thought. If
anything, it strenghtened the feeling that I am not normal. It
showed me that there is no way to fight the normies on their
turf, so I just had to find some other place for myself.
I don't know what to expect this time. It's part the nostalgia
of being on the road without schedule. Part is my affinity to
meditation, but reluctance to sit still for days on end. Partly
it's that I have less of the atheistic fervor that would have
kept me from participating in anything 'Christian'. Mostly though,
I think it's something about how I should think about being alone
in the world.
My ex used to call me the most introverted person she knew. It's
true that I am quite introverted, and during the era of over-reach
I did find that there are hard boundaries to how extroverted I
can be without reputational harm.
Yeah, being alone is not actively bad for me. There is some new
edge to it, though. It is only some years since I have actively
turned against the popular communication platforms. Since I was
so busy with my life and being burned out and so on, I actually
never fully embraced the void left by the electronically mediated
connections. So, in a way it could be that I am looking for a new
tribe as well, or looking for a way to admit to the full hit of
being alone.
