Indulge Me on This One: Top Ten Things I Have Learned From Travel

Today's gimmick to keep you reading is... a drinking game!  So, ladies and gentlemen, grab a bottle of your finest and take a shot every time I say 'roll,' (that was one).  Keep in mind this introduction was an afterthought once I finished this post.  I really used the word THAT many times without meaning to 'cause I am a terrible writer.

Japanese: "My esophagus is on fire"

This is the face of a serious philosopher.

I don't like this sort of writing.  It's dangerously close to that vague and useless travel blog style of writing you see all over the internet that pushes half-baked opinions off as advice but just comes across as annoying.  Also, this feels like binge eating crappy Halloween candy you don't even really like once the good stuff is gone. It's bad for me. I don't like it.  I don't wanna do it, but I've been thinking about those flavored Tootsie Rolls all day and, dammit, they shall be consumed.

Where am I going with this long intro? One of the travel blog/communities I follow recently, in an attempt to increase activity (and, therefore, revenue), recently asked everyone what is the one thing they have learned since traveling solo.  I rolled my eyes and scrolled on, but obviously this Rick Roll'ed my brain.  I surrender to temptation like the hedonist I could be with just a push of ambition. What is the one thing I have learned?  Bah!

The Top Ten Things I Have Learned Since I Started Traveling 

10. I can eat it.

Oh boy!  6 different types of fungus!
All for ME??? YAY!!!

You have to know me to appreciate this one.  I am a really picky eater.  Onions, tomatoes, mushrooms, most cuts of most meats, mangos, eggplant, cauliflower... pickles.  I need to just cut myself off.  All this and I also have a  seafood allergy which includes those trace amounts of seaweed found in ice cream.  When I was living and working in the States, I lived off bread, pasta, cheese, and ice.  Hence the obesity.  Since I have started traveling, I have been forced to be a little more flexible with what I am willing to eat either because it's eat this or starve or it would be rude.  If you are at someone's house and they put a plate of fungus in front of you, you smile and swallow.  I have actually learned to like a lot more foods.  A lot?  Well.  More.  I like more foods now.  I am glad I had a few years of practice between Las Vegas and Beijing.  I have flicked a dead bug off my plate in Turkey and kept going. I have confirmed that the mystery meat on a stick contained no seafood and proceeded to put it in my face without further investigation.  Ignorance isn't bliss by the way.  Your body knows sometimes when something WRONG is going in there.  Which seems like a good transition to...


9. The human body is amazing.
I think we all just take our good ol' transport for granted most of the time.  No matter what you are working with, no matter how well it functions (and, I know my Facebook list has a lot of people on their with serious medical issues), your body is still amazing.  Even when I was morbidly obese, I was always amazed that my body rarely let me down.  Oh, sure.  I might get bronchitis and not be able to shake it for months. Sure, I have needed a few surgeries over the years and blah blah blah.  But.  There has never been a trail I wanted to go on that I wasn't able to finish.  If I've NEEDED to get somewhere, I have always able to walk it (even if that took a few hours).  I get sick all the damned time, and with my below average sense of balance I get banged up, bloody, and bruised a lot, but my body is always, always trying to repair itself as best it can.  I've had ear infections back-to-back for the past two months, but I am really impressed that my body IS trying to self-correct.  Kinda makes me not want to marinate my liver in cheap beer. Kinda.  Almost.  (cracks open another can)  Sigh, it's not even cold. ((Actually re-reading this post and... beer two.  Go!))

8. People are, basically, good.

Strangers who helped me get my IstanbulKart.

Obviously some people are assholes and dipshits and that's just how they roll.  BUT.  For the most part, most people are really just trying to do the best they can for themselves and their family.  I have, like Blanche, always been able to depend on the kindness of strangers whether it is just the checkout dude in Sweden being patient with me for so MANY, MANY reasons to getting a ride with a lady across an island in Japan to be saved a 8-mile walk.  In China, even though people really don't seem to believe me when I insist, no, really, I CAN'T speak Mandarin, most people are friendly and helpful if you need them.

7. Everyone has imaginary friends.

My imaginary friends and I like standing on high places.

Don't deny it. You talk to yourself. Out loud.  And, sometimes, perhaps, when the mood strikes, you have other people waiting in the wings, either people you know in real life or fictional characters in your head, that you have conversations with.  Maybe you just mentally get into a debate with your boss in the shower. Maybe you yell at That Author for killing off a character. I took the long way home once at Nuuksio National Park and had a LONG conversation about morality with some character from a story I wrote back in university.   Yes, a character from a short story I wrote about a botched suicide attempt and I discussed the concept of morality for approximately three hours, getting off topic at times, while mushroom hunting in Finland.  Don't act like you haven't done something equally weird. And sometimes you'd RATHER talk to the voices than real people. 

Smells like isolation.

Or, God, I am assuming we all do this. 

6.  "Lost" is a temporary condition.

A face that is neither proud nor ashamed.

Suddenly you realise you have no idea where you are.  You have no idea where you are going.  You have no idea how public transit works, if there even IS public transit, and, as it happens a lot, you don't speak the local language.  Let's go ahead and remove that Smartphone too.  The damned thing is only so reliable, really.  On my thirtieth birthday I got a little... uh... I got drunk.  There.  Not going to try to dress that up at all.  I was drunk and lost in Dublin and I couldn't even remember the name of my hotel.  It was 4am, I kinda "came to" already walking ("The frack?  Where am I???"), and I just froze on the sidewalk.  I could have panicked.  I could have freaked out but, nah.   Nope, instead I remembered that, at the time, my friend and I talked free no matter where I found (or, you know, lost) myself. I called Mika to share a laugh as I retraved my steps to find SOMETHING, ANYTHING that looked familiar.  Once you get amazingly lost, it takes the pressure off from then on.  I think people worry too much about getting lost.  "Oh my God!  What if I get LOST?"  You will.  It's cool.  You'll get unlost, too.  If you are lucky, you'll get a good story out of it, but odds are you will just end up putting more steps on the pedometer than you expected.  Another time I was drinking with a friend (a lot of my stories include that phrase.  When is an adorable quirk a legit concern?) and we missed the last train home. We had to get from one suburb in Tokyo to another a good unknown number of miles away with NO IDEA of how to get there.  A taxi was involved (he took us to the wrong place!), several police officers were consulted, and we popped into every convenience store we could find as we slowly made our way home. It took us, what, four hours?  Five?  We made it, though!!! Because....

5.  It'll probably work out.

The JOY of finding a bus stop
in the middle of NOWHERE.

Either it will be fine or it won't.  It sounds fifty/fifty, but actually the odds are way more in your favour. You know how your life has been a collection of giant boulders rolling down mountains heading right for you and you have always had to choose to jump left or right?  Did you die?  No.  Not yet. So, really, you have a pretty good track record going. You're on a hot streak.  It'll probably be fine.  All those things in your past that you stressed over? That you freaked out over? That you worried about? Yeah, look at you. All surviving that insanity. Either it will be fine or it won't.  If it is not, worst case scenario, you'll be dead and you won't have to worry about it.  Perhaps, less severe, you have some scar tissue and need a therapist.  Well, at least you can always make dinner parties uncomfortable by interrupting Brenda as she complains about how awful her Carnival cruise was.  ("Really?  The beef was dry?  Huh.  That's AWFUL.  The worst thing ever.  ((takes a drink of wine for dramatic affect))  See this scar?")

4. There is A LOT of space between "Clean" and "Dirty."

Just scoop out the bugs and enjoy!

I used to think of clean as a light switch.  On or off.  Clean or dirty.  Naaaaaaahhhh.... there is a WHOLE lot of space between clean and not clean.  Most of the time, you will probably find yourself shrugging a lot as your "clean enough" zone grows like a baby Burmese Python. I have actually caught myself calculating the likelihood of getting food poisoning or a parasite a few times since coming to China and have decided, well, I mean.  If the local folks do this, it must be okay (TO AN EXTENT!!! I am not REALLY stupid!).  And, I mean, if I do get something, I guess that is what doctors are for...  To an EXTENT.  "Clean enough" and "dirty" are different, but I have had to adjust where my line in the sand is. Thank God my mother took me camping a lot as a kid.

Need to pee?  It's clean enough.

3. Just do it.  
In my case, odds are I won't be coming back.  Somewhere new or somewhere familiar?  19/20, I am going to pick somewhere new.  There are few things I regret doing and a lot I regret NOT doing.  Usually my decisions are spurred by financial reasons more than fear or whatever.  I try to walk the line between not stressing about every damned dollar I spend, because money really does come and go, while not ruining my future.  I'd hate to die with money in the bank, but I also really like having heat in the winter.  And it's been a few paragraphs.  Tootsie Rolls.

"But, can I really afford to drop $100 to go to Tallinn?  I'm already stretched pretty thin... Screw it!  I've got credit cards and a job lined up! Oh!  And Tallinn is beyond my ideas of what 'pretty' can mean?  I almost missed this for $100????"

"Jeeze, is it REALLY worth what it is going to cost me to take a ferry for three hours, one-way, and spend the night on a tiny island?"

Yes.  Oh. My God.  Yes.

2. Failure is rare

It's a fist bump not a punch.
I swear.  My kids LIKE me.

I am thinking about work with this one.  As a teacher, I have walked into classes with lesson plans I wasn't 100% behind.  I remember thinking, "holy mother of GOD.  What am I going to do?"  The thing is, you won't DIE if a day at work goes bad.  Hell, I have seen some HORRIBLE teachers just... just TANK it, and yet, hell.  The world just keeps on spinning.  Whether it is a job interview you are not sure you are qualified for or rough class or a difficult, abstract project, it probably seems awful because you are just to close to it.  You've never messed up so badly you've been fired, in my case anyway, so you'll probably be fine.  And if YOU have been fired, well, hopefully you learned something and you can use that to your advantage.

1. Adaptability trumps every other skill, virtue, or talent.

Christmas in a van?  One of the best we've had!

It doesn't matter how smart you are.  How clever you are.  It doesn't matter how many languages you speak (but if it is more than five, hey.  Sir.  How you doin'?) or how cool of a person you are, if you aren't flexible, if you can't adjust your ideas, standards, or expectations like a figurative finger snap, you're dead in the water.  I am the foreigner; the LEAST I can do when I am somewhere new is just smile and let the stuff that would normally drive my batty (cough, it's called queueing, cough.  Try it, China, you might like it.) roll off like stink from a warthog's backside. Not only does it make ME happier, but my GOD. I know this sounds self-absorbed--this is a personal blog though so the location is appropriate--but I know I have made my coworkers' days a little less stressful when they have to deliver Bad News. 

Unless we are talking about Manager Who Will Not Be Named and Ms. Squid.  They can pop potatos up their noses until French fries fill in the empty vacuum in their skulls where the rest of us keep our brains. I can be just as stubborn as people push me.  Watch me behave badly.  Is this mature?  No.  Do I feel better?  Yes.  So, there.  Cheap therapy since I can't take shots at work.  Roll.

Do... Do I have a drinking problem?  And, if I don't, surely by now you are wonderfully buzzed. I dropped the R-word ten times. Can't be sure if it is the traveling or surviving the twenties, but experience educates and I've certainly had some experiences. 

 Get a cup of water and go to sleep, you dirty drunk.

11.