being blah.com

It’s amazing. It takes only three days, and you feel like you never left the country.

Fax machine jams will do that to you.

You’ve caught up on everything, you’ve unpacked, you’ve started to experience the slippery slope of Post Trip Depression, and suddenly – you’re as good as fucked.

I’m in a bind people, and it’s troubling. Happening more regularly too. The more I travel, the more I want to travel. I thought it was bad in the days I wasn’t travelling at all, where all I wanted to do was see other places, yet all I could afford was a weekend in Natal. Now, it’s bad.

Travelling is like heroin; warn your children.

I’m thinking Shit. What am I going to do until October? (which is possibly the next time I travel.). Honestly I feel like I’m in a fucken prison sentence. October?

It’s amazing, all this seeing amazing places regularly, and meeting foreigners from places like Ukraine to real proper Brits that actually don’t live in Southfields. But it’s also a curse. It’s what is keeping me going – and that can’t be right.

I am a very sad case right now, in that for the past year, this is how I view life: when I’m away, travelling, experiencing language barriers, different foods, vibes and cultures, I feel whole and happy and normal. When I get back to Johannesburg, I really suffer.

It’s like life has become a departure lounge. What to do? I mean, maybe I’m feeling just a bit flat and blah after my trip, and it’ll even out in a few days, and life will be normal, but while everyone else has other priorities like getting married and plotting babies; I’m plotting a trip to Vietnam or Japan at the end of the year.

With the same enthusiasm that they plot completely different aspects of life from mine.
And completely not relating to people who want the 2.5 Dalmatians, rock on their finger, and house in Parkhurst.

(‘Oh my God, I’m engaged!’
‘Oh my God, I’m going to Rio!’)

True as.

Maybe it’s because both Doc and Poen- two of my best friends – are now not here anymore. Maybe it’s because I’ve had some jolly good fun abroad; maybe it’s because I am desperately over this town – whatever, either way, I always know – after a trip, all I do – is live for the next trip.

I sound like a flippen drug addict.

I went for a dinner last night, where I was trying to garner much enthusiasm for local stuff in aid of a French friend of mine. One has to be embassadorial, objective even, and overall, enthusiastic. She hasn’t done much more than Joburg, and yet, for a foreigner, South Africa is a fucken dream come true. Let’s be honest.

It’s cheap. Our wines are out of this world,[and cheap as chips], the coastline, mountains, bush, everything! It’s accessible and wild and beautiful.

So I dialled into the patriotic part of my brain and waxed lyrical about all our wonderful destinations that she simply has to see, with the pomposity of a tour guide.

And yet – truth be told - all I can dream is doing a sneaky trip between now and October to Provence.

To survive.

Five days of small-town Provencale living, in the Luberon, drinking Pastis, playing boule and talking shit to locals, in the south of France.

I miss France so much. After living there, I really have a deep connection to the French and their country.

I’m trying to currently weigh up the feasibility and my air miles. Crazy, never in a million years – until now - would I think of shooting over there for 5 days. Good Lord I’m fucked.

Whilst drinking Diemersfontein Pinotage in the process. (Because no matter what, that comes out tops, even my French friend said so.)

I am a bit screwed. And I’m hating it. I feel like I only live for the next trip, the next amazingly foreign experience. And in the meantime, I’m suffering in my home country.

It’s madness. I’m just keeping head above water and throwing myself into work. It’s unbalanced and unreasonable, even I know this.

And may it go away soon. Will it ever go away?

PS: Fuck! I got the sms at midnight - Michael Jackson has died. I was a full on fan, seriously, what devastating news. (All kiddie-fiddler, plastic surgery, freak of nature comments aside.) It's really really sad.