EFFLORESCERE V4

Mission accomplished?

I'm ahead of schedule. Actually more accurately, I'm simultaneously as afraid of being now ahead as I am behind. There is three months to go until the next birthday but i have finished my 30 by 30 goal. It's not the exact shape and order i thought it would take. Then again so rarely in life does the image we build ourselves ever come to life in the exact way we had originally seen through the camera lens. This was one part of my five year planning at 25. I'm done...shockingly 15 months ahead of schedule. Probably any project manager would agree that something must have fallen behind, perhaps even abandoned, for one part to achieve success so quickly.

Looking back on the last 30 countries, I feel compelled to summarize the highlights. There are some places where I have truly felt the life in the earth while others that I have barely scratched the polish off the wood. I didn't set a criteria to visit on either end of the spectrum. The experience itself, however deep or shallow is perhaps the best testament to my own mindset and curiosity at the time of that visit. In many ways, timing directs the experience.

As for the top highlights themselves:

- Hitchhiking at 3am outside of Rome
- Stumbling into a random dance party in an alley of old town of Barcelona at 2am
- Seeing earth for the first time while stranded on the Big Sur
- Feeling the urge to walk away in the moonlight of Punta del Este
- Simplest pleasures in Sangat Island by discovering how to just BE
- Africa and only the beginning of my desire to see more of Africa
- Idyllic recovery in Lombok and deep life convos with a complete stranger
- Perpetually feeling lost yet fascinated in Tokyo with the best guide
- Boundless history of human achievement and self destruction from the Bankan of Angkor Wat
- and these two will always continue... Culinary highs in NYC and decadence in Shanghai

As for the people that have shared with me these extraordinary experiences, they span nearly 10 years of my life acquaintances. I have lived with you, studied with you and traveled with you. I have spent only a few unforgettable nights with you or shared years of amazing stories with you. I have spoken to you in my worst sober Spanish or my best managed drunk English. I have met you in a loud night club in NYC or on a storming middle island in HK. I have felt the most intense chemistry from the first time you laid eyes on me in purple. I have wanted to know every hidden corner of you as more gets revealed. In every situation, what I can't share with you is that camera lens, the cinematic version of what the director sees. We are the actors without a script and the camera will always produce the most vivid images.

30 before 2011.10

Traveling non-stop - now that would be a dream profession. Writing, photographing, eat, living... that's the type of traveling I want to pursue, not just facing corporate hotel rooms and eating room service. Wanderlust makes one feel ALIVE, or perhaps more detached because nothing feels like home. I can cure the sensation of a different life in my imagination, in those destinations where every sense of life is different. The sky would look different and the air would feel different on my skin. Encounters are adventures, not just brief shuffles on the street.

Almost 2 passports under my belt. Countless consulates to airports fill my memories of the treks I have taken. For every city I have breathed the air in, opportunities open my eyes to life as it would be, living as a nomad, or maybe living as a world citizen.

Yet looking at the map below, the landscape only counts 20 countries (8% of the whole wide world). 30 before 30, that's now within material grasp. Here's the travel list to accomplish before 10/2011

Mexico, Cuba, Costa Rica, Greece, Turkey, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, Morocco, Egypt

create your own visited country map  

Efflorescere - rejuvenate

34 degrees Fahrenheit - NYC today. No chance of greenness or spring that this city can be aware of under the dry crisp sun and sharp wind. Inside layers of clothing, however, there's a feeling that something is breaking new ground. I want to hold the soil in my hands, let it sip slowly, that fine texture, through the dark creases in between fingers. Watching the soil fall back into earth, I feel signs of small dots of green coming through. Maybe it's not just green sprouts. The colors of imaginations are often in the brightest hues. A multitude of excitement, beauty, but also calmness and acceptance is trying to funnel through the blank darkness of the soil. The inner consciousness is rejuvenating.

The public blog has always been an expressivenesses of the mind and heart that goes amiss in the daily life. This is an attempt to recapture that inner creativity from the first three versions of this site. Re-reading the old entries always re-creates a sense of history, fond memories, painful mistakes, maybe even shocking secrets. That same history projects a state of linear progress, moving forward and not dwelling in the forever past.

Personal development has always been a central theme in EFFLORESCERE. Personal development occurs at all different stages and phases of life and not just about the first time something happens. Perhaps the 100th time would be more special than the 1st.

If you are interested in documenting to the world your personal development, maybe you would like to contribute to this blog as well? Thoughtful souls apply.