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I have the most curious desire1 to forsake everything I know, a job, a house, nice things, to travel the world, to write, to see things most people only dream of seeing.
I want to be free, free to write, to see things, to be what I was made to be. I hate being stuck in a 9-6 job, sitting by the window, watching the ocean from the 11th floor, people scurrying about like ants, boats coasting along the water like children’s toys in a bath tub2.
I hate not being a part of it. Life is so much more. There’s a whole world out there, and every day, from 9 to 6, I’m missing it.
I want to sail to Africa, backpack through the middle east. I want to get on a rocket that won’t ever stop until it’s touched the furthest star.
Freewriting. Loosening the pen and the mind, when I get stuck and don’t know—3
Blue, rough fibers4, streaked in blue and green, a foreign pattern. The woman flopped it about her, swatting away at flies by a dusty old well that hadn’t provided for decades. Ancient symbols festooned the marble band that wound around the rim, their meaning lost along with the water.
The woman looked up at the sky, shielding her eyes from their oldest nemesis, that big flaming ball of fire in the sky that roasted and scorched and killed with indifference.
Footnotes
1. I’ve had this desire for a long time. Maybe someday it will come true…
2. Should be bathtub.
3. If I’m freewriting and I have no idea what to write about, I sometimes write that. You’d be surprised how often I stumble onto a new topic simply by keeping the pen moving, even if the pen doesn’t produce anything interesting for a while.
4. After freewriting on one topic, I abruptly switched to another, this time a random visual that popped into my head while I was complaining that I didn’t know what to write about. I remember where I was when I wrote this. I was sitting down at the Starbucks inside Barnes & Noble in Long Beach. I was hosting a meetup group, and was waiting for the one person who had RSVPed to arrive. It’s amazing how much you can recall when a specific memory is attached to a strong sensory perception, even if it’s one that’s imagined.
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I get the disease sometimes, overwhelmed by wanderlust, feeling I will be able find and record someplace absolutely fascinating. But most of the time I travel because I have to and write to fill the time when my family and friends are not around. New places thrill for a few days, but the people I know are the heart of my writing.
I think a part of my craving for adventure is that I spent so much of my life playing it safe. Now I’m rebelling against that, and I want to take more risks.