At the base of my reality I am a shy person.
I know a lot of people don't believe that, and that's ok, but I am.
I used to hate my shyness, it kept me from making friends. It was easier (and way more fun) to lock myself in my head of make believe and stay there but I wanted to have a choice in the matter. So over the years I worked in various ways to overcome my shyness, and I did to an extant, but it's still there, waiting to pounce.
One place that shyness kicks in is when I am traveling.
It's not a constant state mind you, but it happens when my internal balance is off.
The thing is if you want to back pack for an extended period of time you must live out loud.
You have decided to dismiss your privacy to a great extent and carry your world on your back.
In many environments you are a target of intrest, some new breed of turtle that has learned to walk upright and may toppel at any moment. No matter when or where, if you are tired, sick, dirty, sleep deprived, needing to unpack all your things in the middle of a bus station or all the above, the world is taking an intrest in you and watching. It's like a constant performance, a quixotic audience staring at you and your own personal microcosm.
You have no comfort zone to hide in, your "down time" isn't always there.
You are eating new foods at new times and having new experiences that aren't always sunshine and flowers and people are watching you all the time.
It makes me think of how well structured my life in SF was. I tailored my experience completely to my own comfort. I did what I wanted to do when I wanted to do it, I knew the in's and out's of my environment and I knew how to manipulate it. I had to deal with very little that made me unhappy or uncomfortable, I was in so many words spoiled.
In backpacking are there comfort zones? For me some days yes, somedays no, it more depends on my state of mind. What can I laugh off and chalk up to experience and what will devastate me? The same experience on different days has different outcomes.
If I would stay in my comfort zone then I would rarely leave the hotel and never learn anything about myself, and what's the point in that?
There is a whole world of new people, new experiences and each one of those will force me to grow in a new way, and that above all other things is what keeps me going when I feel shy.
I know a lot of people don't believe that, and that's ok, but I am.
I used to hate my shyness, it kept me from making friends. It was easier (and way more fun) to lock myself in my head of make believe and stay there but I wanted to have a choice in the matter. So over the years I worked in various ways to overcome my shyness, and I did to an extant, but it's still there, waiting to pounce.
One place that shyness kicks in is when I am traveling.
It's not a constant state mind you, but it happens when my internal balance is off.
The thing is if you want to back pack for an extended period of time you must live out loud.
You have decided to dismiss your privacy to a great extent and carry your world on your back.
In many environments you are a target of intrest, some new breed of turtle that has learned to walk upright and may toppel at any moment. No matter when or where, if you are tired, sick, dirty, sleep deprived, needing to unpack all your things in the middle of a bus station or all the above, the world is taking an intrest in you and watching. It's like a constant performance, a quixotic audience staring at you and your own personal microcosm.
You have no comfort zone to hide in, your "down time" isn't always there.
You are eating new foods at new times and having new experiences that aren't always sunshine and flowers and people are watching you all the time.
It makes me think of how well structured my life in SF was. I tailored my experience completely to my own comfort. I did what I wanted to do when I wanted to do it, I knew the in's and out's of my environment and I knew how to manipulate it. I had to deal with very little that made me unhappy or uncomfortable, I was in so many words spoiled.
In backpacking are there comfort zones? For me some days yes, somedays no, it more depends on my state of mind. What can I laugh off and chalk up to experience and what will devastate me? The same experience on different days has different outcomes.
If I would stay in my comfort zone then I would rarely leave the hotel and never learn anything about myself, and what's the point in that?
There is a whole world of new people, new experiences and each one of those will force me to grow in a new way, and that above all other things is what keeps me going when I feel shy.
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