Home at last

March 24, 2009

Well, surprise! I'm home in Ridgefield, Connecticut. It's not that much of a surprise, really. I've been home a week.

I've been meaning to write a conclusion to this blog, but it's been a struggle to come up with some wonderful moral of the story to sign out on. I've never been good with endings.

The problem is, there is no conclusion. There is no big lesson. I left home thinking travel would help me figure out what I want to do with my life, where I want to live, what I want to be when I grow up. But it did just the opposite. It opened up a whole new world of possibilities.

I had been planning to keep going until May, head back down to the Thai Islands, then explore Hong Kong and China. But after getting back to Bangkok after a big loop through northern Thailand, Laos and Cambodia, I found that I just didn't have it in me to take another overnight bus ride, or adjust to a new language or figure out a new exchange rate. I hit a big wall and got stalled in Asia's sweaty, hot City of Lights.

Sleepless in Bangkok, I started getting in touch with family members, friends and former colleagues at home. I was testing the waters for a return. Could I get my job back at the newspaper company in this awful economic climate? Did I even want to return to that? Could I move to New York and get a job there? Should I just take off again?

I knew I wanted to come home, at least for a little while. I wanted comfort. Travel is exciting but uncomfortable.

What I decided finally is that this isn't the end of my travels. I'm already off next week to return to Greece to pick up that job DJing in Corfu for part of the summer. Big move up in the world: newspaper editor to DJ at a youth hostel. Sorry, DJ's assistant. Even better.

The move back to Europe is to bide my time a little through this summer. The fact is, Greece is the only place in the world where I have a set job. A return to Europe will also allow me to reconnect with many of the friends I made early on in the trip.

Home is strange. There is also a new topic of conversation floating around amongst a large percentage of my friends: Settling down. I listened to a group of my girlfriends talking the other night about the merits of white versus yellow gold wedding rings, picking out a signature drink to match their bridal colors and buying houses in good school districts. I had nothing to say. And I didn't want to bring up my trip. Instead, like in much of the rest of the world, I sat back and observed. When one of my friends called for us to throw in some extra money to tip our waitress, I handed over some Cambodian riel and walked out.

But besides that, home is strange because the familiar become unusual when you're used to the unfamiliar. But how easy it is to slip back into old habits, to pick up the same conversations. Right now I'm torn up inside about leaving again. There seems to be some unfinished business here.

But as I said before, I've never been good at finishing much of anything.