still looking

I am sitting in the office. It is 9 am, and I am one hour into a very dull and probably un-eventful workday. So, to pass my time, I am reading another Somerset Maugham book online (Theatre), trying to find a decent Russian radio station to listen to (none of them work with my Windows Media Player), and being a stalker on Facebook. Anyways, here’s what I’m thinking about. While on my summer vacation in Dali, I met Josh, who is a bit of a rare breed. He’s taken off to China for nearly a year, and to do nothing in particular but… live, and maybe learn some Chinese along the way. He’s traveling around, and he’s been to a ton of interesting places that I haven’t even heard of. Today I was looking through his photos (amazing!) and I realized how incredibly jealous I am of the China he gets to experience. It is the China that will never be captured in this blog and it is the China that you need to have a certain eye for to see. You know those people who are just good at traveling? When you meet them, you immediately get a sense that they’re open to anything, flexible, and constantly absorbing elements from their environment. The two people who illustrate this most vividly and two people who the readers of this blog have probably never met: Sinclair and (aforementioned) Josh. I think that Jennene also fits into this category, but I don’t really know her enough yet. There is just something about these people which is so much more raw than anything that I’ve yet done. But I have time. I love my time in China and I know that, on the flipside, many people will never experience day-to-day life in the same way that I have. But… looking at his photos just made me wish that I had been there at the Miao bull fight, and at the sky burial, and for the haircut. it hits you particularly hard when you’re sitting in an office chair for hours at a time, when, just outside, there are myriad people, stories, and adventures. aren’t any of you scared that one day you’ll just stop being curious? that the morgage payments and bills are gonna pile up so high that they become your immediate future, and the things you’ve always wanted to do are put off until ‘later’? This isn’t a novel sentiment, obviously. But it makes me wonder why so many people play the game. /le sigh.
[in retrospect, this entry makes me look really presumptuous. but I think bouts of this stuff are allowed at 20, right?]