Putting the Backpacker Lifestyle On Hiatus

I find great joy and comfort in carrying 10kgs on my back. With the freedom of simplicity and the ability to constantly change direction based on whatever passing desire. So the hardest thing for me since moving to Thailand has been swallowing the reality that I have a permanent home for 6 months.

And some in my position might breathe an air of relief. Thank god, I can finally unpack and organize my clothes on hangers. No more rummaging around for that one shirt or that bottle of lotion accidentally crammed to the middle of the pack. Thank god, I no longer have to think about my next destination. No more anxiety in finding the next bus out of town or bartering for the cheapest transport. But for me, these things that make most people want to pull out their hair and scream for mercy, these are the things that reenergize me during my adventures.

Because when you are a backpacker you have the liberty to leave. Leave the social environment because you don’t click well with the other travelers on your current path. You also have the liberty to stay. Stay to hop just one more island because of the pure happiness you get looking into the deep blue. I’ve changed itineraries constantly as Nora the Explora. I fell for an Irish boy and extended my stay in this rainy land. I didn’t mesh with a workaway host family in New Zealand so I dipped. That’s the beauty of being a backpacker: the choice is always yours.

But I’m currently a resident. In a city that I most definitely would have skipped on the traveling trail. For a girl with sand between her toes, dirt under her fingernails, and a soul wandering around the rainforest, being placed in concrete feels suffocating. I don’t like the traffic. I can’t easily access anything beyond a 4-block square. I find the city too developed. I can’t see rice fields, I just see business attire. I get tossed around in the hustle and bustle. And I just want to cry (I have).

So I find myself recently asking, “Nora, what have you gotten into?” My head is full of negative thoughts. I whine all the time. There is always something to bitch about. And with the recent political coup, I more than ever feel the need to complain.

Then I open up A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle, and instantly I’m reminded how this is exactly the challenge I need, this is exactly the lesson I was meant to learn.

"The quicker you are in attaching verbal or mental labels to things, people, or situations, the more shallow and lifeless your reality becomes, and the more deadened you become to reality, the miracle of life that continuously unfolds within and around you. In this way, cleverness may be gained, but wisdom is lost, and so are joy, love, creativity, and aliveness. They are concealed in the still gap between the perception and the interpretation. Of course we have to use words and thoughts. They have their own beauty-but do we need to become imprisoned in them? “

So I’m trying to drop the descriptors of misery, while at the same time simmering the energy surge of my thoughts on the ecstasy of wanderlust elsewhere.

Don’t let thoughts take your possession. You’re missing this. You’re missing this.