On the Road to Find Out

I’ve been back in England for over two weeks now and the change of scenery hasn’t had as debilitating effect as may have been predicted. This is perhaps due to the fact that I’ve been doing very little, and therefore, not too much of a change from my last couple of months in Brazil, where a strenuous day involved a yoga session and a swim in the ocean.

I’m not sure how much longer I can keep this going (I am looking for web design work at the moment mind, it’s just nothing’s biting just yet!). It’s a curious situation trying to do so little in a country like England, a country that prides itself on suffering. The worker who only does 20 hours per week is seen as being on perennial holiday while the 50 hour a week labourer is able to sit on his perch dictating the ills of the nation without reproach, he is after all a shining example of what this country needs. It doesn’t matter that he’s always in tired and in a full mood, he’s done an honest week’s work and that’s alright.

It’s something I’ve never understood but which still has embedded itself somewhere in my psyche. I talk of doing nothing for two weeks but I have been doing plenty of writing, reading, playing guitar, furious plan-making and have designed two web sites. It’s far more than when I was a student. I suppose then I would have said I was studying then at least I would have an excuse.

I made a commitment a couple of years ago that I would never return to 9-5 mediocrity. It’s something which I’m damned on continuing even if it does mean the current precariousness of trying to earn money through web design. It’s something which I will hopefully continue somewhere else though, somewhere a bit more continental than here, somewhere where I don’t seem like such an unworthy citizen.

Before I wrote this article I read a review of a new movie Cemetery Junction which helped awaken in me this annoyance at glowering suffering. It’s a review by David Cox in The Guardian where he criticises the movie based on the fact that it isn’t glum enough. It’s one of the most ridiculous reviews I’ve ever read, as if the fact his own experiences in the 70s (when this film is set) were so bad he can’t imagine anyone having a nice time. It’s also possible that this review is aimed at Ricky Gervais, someone that people used to like or were not bothered about, but now that he’s a big fish in Hollywood seems to get a lot of hate from English people, disgusted at the success he’s managed to achieve. Hollywood changes people, you should be suffering like the rest of us!

English soil is once again under my footsteps. Concepts such as having a mobile phone, finding work and bitterly cold, moist afternoons are concepts I once again have to embrace. The first two of these I will be doing whatever I can to avoid, the third is unavoidable. I can’t pretend it’s all doom and gloom. God how I missed jacket potatoes, and god how I enjoyed having one for dinner on my first day back. Can there be a baked bean breakfast on the horizon? I sincerely hope so.

One thing I have been wondering since I got back has been whether to continue this blog. How does the relevance of what I write change when I am no longer travelling? Ultimately, I have decided to try and keep it going. I actually have quite a few stories which are yet to be told on these pages and so I will be adding these, especially since I will now be trying my damned hardest to avoid any real work, and these could be the perfect foil to make me believe that I am being productive while also not actually really doing anything that productive at all.

During these next months I will also be trying to work out further travels, especially since I currently have no ties at all, and am wanting to make the most of this arrangement, so will be trying to write a little about my travails in finding further overseas exploits (I have current ideas to either return to Brazil or instead live in Berlin – they both sound like great choices!) My hope with all of this is to at least keep it personal and not seem like one of those terrible expanded blogs that has articles about all kinds of places but never actually tells you about the person. I will try my best.

For now,
Tchau!