“Staying in hostels, I’ve met a lot of people that are traveling for a year, like you, but I couldn’t do it.  I can go away for two weeks, maybe three, but then I want to get back to my space, my stuff.”  This was what the German doctor staying at the hostel with me in St. Augustine told me one night.  Once again, someone had come into my life to say just the right thing at just the right time.  “That’s exactly what I’m feeling,” I told him.  I confessed that I wanted nothing more at the moment than my own space, by myself.  I wanted to curl up in my recliner chair with a good book, my blue crocheted blanket keeping me warm.  Not have to search for food, but being able to go right to my fridge and find exactly what it is I’m craving – my favorite locally made goat cheese, delicious bread, and roasted red peppers I just made that afternoon.  Or pine nut hummus and pita bread.  Or all the ingredients for my favorite quinoa dish, sitting there ready for me.  I want to cook, not have to figure out where I’m spending the next night, or how much money I have left for my year of living without a job or a permanent home.

Instead, I find that I have difficulty enjoying where I am in the present moment as I’m too confused about my future.  Do I really want to do all those things I’ve said I was going to?  But if I don’t, then what will I do instead?  Will I feel defeated if I just go back home?  But home to what? I don’t even have my own space to go back to.  Yes, plenty of friends have offered me rooms in their homes anytime during this year or when I return, for which I am deeply grateful, but it’s not the same.

Do I even want to go back to New York?  Yes, because my family is there and I happen to be one of the very lucky people who actually likes their family (for the most part).  But were they not all in New York, it’s not a place I’d choose to live.  Though I can’t tell you where else I would choose.  Or do I know and am just too scared to, again, move to a place where I have hardly any connections and start – seemingly – all over?

So this is why I haven’t written a post in so long.  I tend to write mostly positive posts and just didn’t have the energy for one of those – because I’m not really positive about my life at the present moment.

But then I realized that might not be the reason at all for my lack of writing.  It’s just that I haven’t been taking care of myself.  I know what I love doing.  Writing.  Cooking.  Spending time with people.  Reading.  I’ve done the last two, but am severely lacking in the first two.  So tonight, having a half hour to myself, I decided to just start writing and see what came.  And here you have it.