I’ve been a bit quiet lately. I guess blogging, like writing and just about everything else in life, goes through peaks and troughs. During the space since my last update I’ve had exams (one of the joys of going back to uni) and have booked myself a trip to the United States for a month (woohoo).

The impetus for the trip came from a spontaneous decision to see a tarot reading one afternoon after taking myself out for lunch in St Kilda. The tarot reader told me a number of things mostly of the standard format: you’re going to meet someone soon, you’re going to have two kids (but very different to each other), you’ll get a new job, and things are going to work out great for you.

One of the other things she told me, which was probably more to do with my demeanour during the session than anything else, was that I needed a holiday. At first I thought, ‘no, I don’t need a holiday, they’re expensive and I’m not earning very much, I’ll be ok’. But then, as I thought more about it over the next few days, I decided, ‘no, fuck it, I deserve a holiday. I haven’t had one for ages and I want one.’ So I had a bit of a look online and bought myself plane tickets to the US and that was that.

I’m going to be taking a laptop and my camera with me, so I hope I’ll be able to post some updates and photos along the way but I make no guarantees! This trip is about getting away from my normal routine, it’s about finding out about myself when I’m put into unfamiliar surroundings. It’s about trying out new things and being with people I’ve never met before – people I haven’t had the time to develop bad habits with.

A friend of mine has recently decided to go on a yoga retreat, and while I was reading up about it I came across a fascinating thought; going on holiday basically just removes the problems in your life for that brief period of time and once you return home you fall straight back into those bad habits, hating your job, grumbling about public transport. All the things that you were trying to get away from slither back into your psyche. On the other hand, so they were saying, a retreat is more about teaching you to look at things differently, it’s about learning not to be that person who spends their life hating everything, it’s about learning to find joy and let go of stress – or even to harness stress as motivation.

I guess what I’m saying is that I hope this trip allows me to get some distance from the stuff that’s been causing me difficulties, and that this distance allows me to unlearn some of my bad coping strategies so that when I come back I can approach things with fresh eyes. Apart from the obviously amazing opportunities that arise from actually going somewhere completely foreign and taking in all the sensations and experiences that come with it, I hope that the trip allows me to grow as a person and come back in a better place with a better perspective. I hope it will be both a physical journey and a step forward in my own personal life journey. I can’t wait to get started!