The Flight of the Rocketman

Strange soul you are
I stand in wonder
You make your own rules and use your own devices
You lay back easy to do
And I wish I were you
-- Wish I Were You, Alisha's Attic (written by Terry Martin and Shellie and Karen Poole)

I have jet-setting friends. I have friends who have traveled the world and seen the many different wonders there are to see in this enormous planet we live on. I have a friend who has surfed on the waves of 4 different continents. He has seen so many parts of the world. Another goes back and forth from Europe and Asia, different countries, for work. My parents, when they were my age, traveled all over the world.

What a wonder it would be to just step out and see it -- the mountains of Tuscany and Austria, the rivers in Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia, the Great Wall of China, Big Ben and the Aurora Borealis. How wonderful it would be to visit New Zealand for a month. See all the places that Lord of the Rings had shot -- mountains, streams, forests. I even saw an episode of Amazing Race where they had a chasm that's really, really deep in New Zealand. And you have to hang on a rope and be brought down. If I'm not mistaken, 200 feet deep.

I've only been to Rome and Florence, Hong Kong and Shanghai. I want more. Rome and Florence was so beautiful - ancient and glorious. Shanghai was a mixture, the old and the new. It was fusion. It was alien to me. Hong Kong was just a huge shopping mall and for a kid of 13, that's not bad.

But I want more.

I just wish I wasn't so scared of doing the whole back-packer thing. I know I could probably find work as a dishwasher in a restaurant. I'm not against hard labour. I can sleep anywhere. All I really need is a clean toilet bowl. That's all I ask for, that's my only modern comfort demand. Otherwise, it's a go.

I'm just scared of the time lost. I could be making my resume more impressive. I could be making more work and if I'm out there, living a life fantastick out there in the world; would I be able to do that. I feel that maybe, after 3 years of that, all over Asia, I'd be able to sit down and just write non-stop for weeks. But I just can't help think of the things that will be left behind.

I'm weighing the things that will be left behind and the things that will be brought home with me... And I can't figure out which has more value to me. It is such a neutral debate in my opinion.

I know that it's mostly fear. Fear of the unknown. The fear grips me and forces the thrill of the unknown out of me. I want too much to spend my time in such a life experiment. I want sure results.

And that really makes me sad for me. I look at my friends who have been around the world, who threw care to the wind and just left and became a part of whatever world they found themselves in. It's so inspiring.

And it makes me feel small.

But I don't stop dreaming that one day I'll make it there. That I'll see this world myself. With so many wonders, so many things out there that is so beyond us, how could one want to just stay home forever? It is something I don't understand...