This is the second photo for today.
I think this educational vignette had something to do with food preparation.
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Over the last few years I've been on a handful of trips here and there all related to work. It's been good in some ways but work-related travel is not the same as real travel. Firstly it is not a break but actually requires more preparation, more work afterwards, and boatloads of work on arrival. And there are expectations to be met. I am there to perform and provide a service. This can be mentally and emotionally taxing. But I enjoy it too. I have learned a lot about myself through these experiences. All-in-all, no matter how well it goes, traveling for work is exhausting and there is often very little time to see and experience the places visited.
Going on a long-overdue week-long vacation recently has opened the floodgates to something -- a part of myself perhaps that I was doing my best to push aside out of necessity. And now it's all I can think about. How can I go more places? How can I take longer trips? How can I make the space and time in my life and how can I raise the cash? I have commitments right now that will see me through 2008. But my brain is churning. Who knows what possibilities will present themselves but I am thinking about next winter and 2009.
We have been watching "Long Way Down" recently which is not helping the travel itch one bit. Those vistas and amazingly interesting places are captivating my imagination. No motorcycle trips for me in the near future though. Hell, I've got to get a license to drive a fucking car first -- something that just happens to be on the agenda this year.
Since the new year recently passed I have been thinking about how to encapsulate where I am right now and where I see myself going in the next year. We used to make up silly rhyming mottos for each New Year that didn't really have much overall meaning. I've never been a resolution-maker but my brain has been in that space recently -- with changes happening inside my head and new things on the horizon, the passing year really felt like turning a corner into something new and a leaving of other things behind. This motto hasn't come to me yet but it's got something to do with freedom.
Song: A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall (Live) Bob Dylan.