Some Things I am Excited About

I may not have updated everyone recently...I am quitting the job and traveling for an indeterminate period of time. Holy shit, right? Before you go and worry yourselves, this has been a long time coming...if you've read anything that I've written here, or know me as a person in general, you probably have the sense that 'jobs' and I do not get along in the most idyllic form of camaraderie. We just don't see eye to eye. I dislike being lorded over and told specifically what to do with my time, and they dislike being disobeyed and made a secondary priority amidst the many facets of any given life. Yobs are supposed to be function, to be purpose! Why does Matt dislike us so?

I don't feel the need to explain myself, because I feel that 80% of my friends are sympathetic, working jobs such that they can survive comfortably as opposed to harshly, garnering responsibility...everything we are instructed to revere. At any rate, I find myself excited to take a portion of time off, to stir my life around and agitate the potencies which have settled and lie dormant at present. This is one of my focii as I bound about - to figure out a better mode of life, of reasoning which still supports me but which compromises less of my being and my intended existence/expression in the meantime. This is a monstrous task, but it also has the charm of being an enjoyable one....juggling possible extensions and iterations of myself, finding one which I am most comfortable with but which also allows a more thorough and justified presence of mind, streaming the incantations which I desire most to express.

To travel: here I come. After much deliberation (months) and funding (years) and waiting (decades), I have settled upon a position of "fuck it" regarding my finances as they stand now, and purposefully select the option wherein I discharge all my hard currency into Europe's disastrous economic situation in an effort to bolster it in my own meager way. Also, this will include me receiving many places to stay and transportation to and fro and delicacies heretofore unknown by my domestic palate. Kind of a perk, right? Just doing my best to help out the economy.

Travels as planned: ~3 months. New York, England, France, Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Czech Republic, Italy, Spain. Bouncing here and there, with the exception of Italy which will be a 3 or 4-week stint (more on this in a second). Finally the excitement is eclipsing the nervousness, and I feel like my mind will have entire worlds and perspectives to absorb, and hopefully an equal or greater amount to output based on this input. That's right; much of this is an artistic journey, with the aim of exploding my mind into a million pieces, energy which I hope to use to construct many a work of fiction. Also, there will be sightseeing and friendship-forging and exploration of offbeat paths.

Italy. I am staying at a monastery here for 4 weeks. This will be wonderful, and ideally will give me respite and an opportunity to construct the better portions of a book which I have been playing with ideas of for the last half-year or so. I will have to do a fair amount of work at the monastery, but I feel confident that being in such an atmosphere will allow me to reign in my focus and spend time on my own endeavors. It is, after all, an Art Monastery, basically sieged by paperwork and taken over by a venerable community of artists and flipped into a bed-and-breakfast to pay the bills. There should be other artists of all concentrations working and living there as well, so it will hopefully be an incredibly nourishing and replenishing experience. One point of curiosity is that I will not have a laptop, or at least as presently planned I will not. I've never written anything significant without one; the ability to Ctrl-F and save as different files and research via the internet is always something which I have taken for granted. So, this will be a difficulty which needs to be overcome. Pen and paper are something which I have not tangled with in a long time. One reason I write on a computer is that the keyboard allows me faster documentation of my thoughts, and with my brain behind the stream, that is a very good thing. I'll have to slow my processes down when I'm writing on paper, but hopefully that will be more helpful than hindrance. I imagine my individual thoughts will be more fleshed-out, but I am somewhat worried about losing track of where I was going with the larger themes racing through my head while scribbling away at the minor details. Ah well. I'm sure it will work, one way or another.

Let me know if you'd like me to send you a postcard from somewhere~