Nietzsche said that.  The fist part, about life and boring ourselves.  Not the second part, about going on strike.  I added that to make a point.

So I don’t know if you’ve heard, but I guess the internet is joining up in protest today to go on strike.

You heard me.

The internet is going on strike.

This would’ve been a great thing to know… I don’t know… yesterday, like before I got up at 6:30 this morning so I could write a blog post before heading off to my job that actually pays.  I mean, the sponsors aren’t exactly banging down my door over here.  I don’t know why companies wouldn’t want to attach their names to my drinkin’, swearin’, sex-obsessed self.  It’s mind-boggling, to say the least.

So.  I’m up.  I’m here.  And I won’t get paid for several hours.  In light of that fact and in the spirit of adventure capitalism, I think I’ll take advantage of all of the downed sites and hopefully benefit from the fact that apparently I’m the only site online right now.

That’s right.

You’re stuck with me.

It’s not that I don’t back the cause, ’cause I do.  It’s just that if I only have but a short time left to express my uncensored thoughts and opinions to the world, I kind of want to take advantage of them, you know?  Plus, I didn’t buy gas on that one day they said we shouldn’t buy gas a couple of years ago, and we all know how that turned out.  Oil companies still turned record profits, and I never bought that Prius.

Moving on.

Lately I’ve been distracted.  Like, crazy distracted, soaking up someone’s blog like it’s a Harry Potter novel, only even better because the adventures are real.  Her name is Brenna, and I’ve been working my way back from the very beginning of her blog, This Battered Suitcase, like some crazy internet stalker obsessed with setting up shop in someone else’s life.  Vicariously, of course.

For someone like me, it’s hard to not envy the nomadic life she’s made for herself, and she’s only in her mid-20’s.  Of course, on the flip-side, true wanderers occasionally get lonely and ache for the type of companionship and comfort that only comes with homesteading for a while, but if this is one of those “grass is always greener” situations, the other grass is the seasonal stuff that turns brown in winter climates, while her grass is like a golf course in southern California — that bitch (the golf course, not Brenna) ain’t ever gettin’ brown.  She’s alluded to as much in one of her short, photo-filled, thought-provoking posts — she wouldn’t trade the life she sometimes thinks she might envy a little on occasion for the world she knows she loves to experience.

I have to be careful here, because I don’t want you to get the wrong idea.  I love my husband.  I love my pups.  I love my friends, and my house, and the little niche we’ve created for ourselves in this place I’m far from calling home.

But.

Do any of you ever get the feeling that you’re still not doing what you’re supposed to be doing?  That, somehow, there’s more to be done, and you just need to figure out what it is and how to get there?  I’ve talked before about trying to live life in the moment and not wasting time looking for the next thing on the horizon that’s going to “complete” you, but this is different.  I’m talking about a sense of purpose.  Of making a difference.  At least to yourself, if no one else.

I read a quote by Mark Twain, who supposedly said,

Photo by Blunt Delivery.  I think.  At least, I found it on her Pinterest and it said it was uploaded by her, so it’s hers until I hear otherwise.

I don’t know how to make this travel bug blend with the life I’ve already created for myself.  But I also know that it’s not going away.  Once infected, the symptoms are life-long, my friends, and it’s a little bit torturous if you don’t give it the drug that it needs to subside.  Unfortunately, that drug can be expensive — not just monetarily, but also when it comes to time and relationships.  Current jobs and responsibilities.  This grind of debt and home ownership and 9-5’s we call The American Dream.  Some of those things I care about deeply.  But others, not so much.

If I’m going to be honest, and you know I’m never anything but, I have a current lack of stimulation that’s not filled from showing people houses or watching How I Met Your Mother.  And I know, if I have time to think on my bed of death, that I won’t be wondering who the mother really is or whether the writers of that show ever plan on telling us.  I will be wondering if I experienced enough — if I met enough people, heard enough stories, tasted enough food, read enough books, loved enough worlds.

Am I the only one who feels like this?

They tell us, as writers, to write what we know.  And all I know is, I need to know more.  What the food tastes like in Myanmar.  How the locals dress in Laos.  How difficult it is to buy camera batteries in Croatia.

I’m pretty sure I can make this happen, and that I can make it blend with what I already have.

Now.

Does anyone want to send me some money?