NoJoMo Day 26 in NoJoMo 2022

What’s one thing you’d like to do more?

Travel.
More than anything.

My crippling social anxiety and paranoia has kept me from venturing out of my comfort zone for so long.

Few years back I decided to carry that anxiety and paranoia with me and just took off. Went to Thailand. Spent 15 days there.

By the end of first week, I was friends with the hotel management, cab drivers, exotic dancers, and even one “mistress”, she had her lunches / smoke breaks every day with me.

Being friends with the hotel staff paid off the most, they’d always get me discounts with the cab drivers where ever I was going, and their suggestions were always superb. Besides their disappointment in me that I refused to visit the “massage” centers and bath houses.

By the end of the vacation, it felt like I had more than enough social prowess and my engagement with strangers was always great.

Then I visited a couple of other countries.

Turkey in particular was great, Istanbul was a great host.
Waking up in a foreign place, knowing the “hunt” for breakfast was going to be an adventure and everywhere you walk is a completely new scenery and experience was sublime.
Not knowing where I’d be at lunch time was even more exciting.
I always chose to have dinner far away from the hotel, so I can absorb the night life of the city and take note of places I want to visit at night.
While I was admiring the murals inside the metro station, I heard this lovely voice singing a song in Turkish.
I followed the song to find a girl with such deep dark eyes, lush wild curly hair, dressed in all black, busking with a guitar.
I sat on the floor and listened to the whole song. I wish I had recorded it, I was just so lost in the moment.

Dubai was great, Infinity des Lumières alone was worth the trip. Sitting in that live art exhibit, with the classical music playing, I crumbled and shattered into a million little pieces. I didn’t care, I was free. I cared very little for the world outside. That one hour spent inside that art installation was worth the entire trip.
I want that again.
Being lost in foreign cities and just following sights and sounds with no care in the world.
I would be great if I had company, I think life’s coming to the point where I would like a companion, a partner in my adventures.
Loneliness is a good vacation, not a good place to live.

Last updated November 29, 2022