A rubber ball

Tannum Sands, Queensland, Australia.

I am not in the most romantic place imaginable: in a Subway sandwich shop with a view over a parking place (with lots of empty spots). I had a salad here and was able to put some electricity in my laptop and phone. With the help of Personal Hotspot (the tethering function on my iPhone) I have access to the internet. So that’s nice. And there is a beautiful full moon in the sky. That is nice too.

I just uploaded to YouTube a couple of clips I recorded today. I have not much better to do than talk to myself during this part of my trip. Because I took the decision to not censor myself you can see me cry on one of the videos. My mother won’t be happy with that, she has asked me several times to remove the very first video I shot when I just was about to fly out of Amsterdam and was terrified of the step I was about to make. There are a couple of tears in that one too. Personally, I feel that showing the ups and leaving out the downs is missing the point. And since I put today’s clips already on YouTube I feel I have to talk about it.

What caused my loneliness, confusion and sadness today was the realization that I don’t know where I am going and what I am doing. Literally, I don’t know. I step in my hippie van and drive, without a goal, an appointment or somebody expecting me. I put a name of a town in the GPS and I have no clue what is going on in that destination. At the same time the places are quite similar: small towns with beautiful beaches and not much else.

Driving gives me something to do. Today I passed the 1000 km point for the second time: I have driven 2000 kilometers to walk on various beaches, drink coffee and eat salad and chicken from the super market while sitting on the board walk. Sometimes I write a post, some nights not. And around 9 pm I start looking for a place to sleep. In the morning I swim and meditate, make breakfast and buy a cup of coffee and leave.

The nice part is the driving itself. My friend Marcel send me a nice playlist so I can listen to his music. The climate, the scenery, the agriculture, the trees, the temperature: it all changes. But slowly the question is rising up from inside me: where the hell am I going? What am I doing here in Australia? It must be more then driving 3000 km up North and then turn around and drive 3000 km back, right? Right? And what about the bigger questions? Where is my life going? Where is this journey going? Am I actually learning anything? Why am I still alone? (I ran into a wedding, that triggered the last question).

So I uploaded 4 clips and the sequence is kind of funny (or interesting, what ever way it touches you). In the first video you see an impression of the vastness of the country and get a feeling of freedom. In the second clip you see me go through the 2000 km mark and the question comes up “what am I doing here?” In the 3^rd video I feel desperately sad, lonely and lost and in the 4^th video I am happy again. A bit of yoga and a shot of adrenaline when I realized the dry riverbed was turning into a big river during my sun salutations worked miracles. Life tastes better if you have to run for it.

Just another day at the Basic Goodness office, I guess. From happy to sad and lonely and back. I feel like rubber ball now and then (read: often): bouncing back and forth. Right now I feel that I am in Australie to to learn to be alone. Also to learn to travel without an aim or goal and to be happy with that. Or wait, maybe I should not try to answer these questions at all. Maybe I should just let it happen.

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