almostfearless.com |
| Posted: 14 Dec 2011 09:29 AM PST
After Angkor Wat, we took a bus to Sihanoukville, the beach area of southern Cambodia. We spent a few days on Otres Beach, a quiet stretch of beach huts on white sand, deserted except for a few dozen tourists, the occasional tout and the tiny jellyfish that make their way to shore at dusk but don’t seem to sting. I love the beach. Until I don’t. My husband and I have an on-going debate about happiness. I wonder, aloud and often, if I would just be happier living on the beach somewhere in Southeast Asia, spending about $500/mo to live like a surf bum and spending my days alternating between napping in a hammock, reading a book and eating. That sounds perfect. Until I get it, exactly that and about three days in that feeling returns. I have an inexplicable desire to do something. A project. A task. Something with a deadline and impossible objectives. So the conversation goes like this: Me: “Wouldn’t I just be happier being a beach bum?” Drew: “Yes, except you would go insane.” Me: “Right. What’s up with that?” Drew: “No idea.” My husband doesn’t have this problem with happiness. His happiness comes from within and it follows him wherever he goes. He makes a fantastic life partner and a terrible project manager. I’m the opposite. I’m happy accomplishing things, making something, having a goal. I guess after three years of travel and dabbling in the fine art of slackerdom, I have to admit it: I really like to work. I was recently re-reading Gretchen Rubin’s famous book “The Happiness Project”. In some ways, I feel like I’ve done my own happiness project — I quit my job, I chose a new career, I redesigned my days (sleeping in, showering at noon, working in my pjs and wearing yoga pants on most days) and I carefully watch for what works (dinner with friends is an instant morale booster) and what doesn’t (trying to do things that I don’t enjoy in the name of meeting some other objective). There was one thing that stood out to me upon re-reading: Happiness is growth. After Otres Beach in Sihanoukville we took a 90-minute taxi to a small town called Kep. It’s famous for it’s crab. In a hotel room, overlooking the Gulf of Thailand, we stuffed ourselves on the spiny crustaceans and laid out what became known to us as the “Happiness Project Phase II”. I had traveled. I had changed careers. I had a baby. If Gretchen Rubin’s advice was correct, then soon enough this would become so routine to me — jetting off to Cambodia with my husband and son — that I’d not only become bored but worse, it would no longer make me deliriously happy. The beach is just a beach if you stay long enough. There is one thing I have been putting off for years now. I always wanted to learn a second language. When I envisioned myself traveling, while stuffed into a suit and doodling on my notepad in client meetings, I pictured a version of myself that would wake up early, head off to the market, greet the shopkeepers and produce stall workers in their language, make small talk about the weather without using English and jet off to begin my day completely in another tongue. Instead, I focused on writing and photography (I recently counted and found that I’ve taken 40,000 photos since June 2008) and after Cole was born whatever Spanish I had gained in my travels slipped away to that part of my brain that also knows where my keys are, the password to that account I never use, and the name of the book my friend recommended. It’s in there somewhere, but I have no idea how to access it. So the one thing I have put off, out of a desire to travel more frequently (you need to sit still for a bit to learn a language) and competing priorities, is now a possiblity. I could go somewhere for six months, get an apartment, only speak that language, take some classes and voila, just like that, I’d be fluent. In Kep, we hunkered down and finalized the plan. On January 1st, we leave Chiang Mai, Thailand. The question of where to next, I’ll answer in my next post.       |
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