Travels coming to a close: some random thoughts on my journey (pt. 1)

Time has sped up in the last few weeks, and now I only have ten days until I return to the United States and "the real world." At this rate, those ten days will pass in an hour.

I began planning this trip well over a year ago. I quit my job in Charleston, moved back home to New Orleans, and saved up money for five months until I could afford to leave it all behind. I moved to Buenos Aires. There were a number of reasons I felt I had to do this. First and foremost, I had never been out of the country on my own. It seemed like a rite of passage to becoming an adult. Second, my life had become incredibly dull and repetitive, and I needed something to inject me a sense of thrill and a thirst for life. Third, I am a writer, and I was suffering from a severe case of writer's block. This is why I chose Buenos Aires. For many years I have had an infatuation with Argentine and South American literature. Two of my favorite writers, Jorge Borges and Julio Cortazar, were natives of Buenos Aires, so I thought I might satisfy my curiosities and cure my writer's block by immersing myself in their environment and trying to seek out the sort of inspiration they found in that city.

Buenos Aires was everything I imagined it could be and more. I can't say that I ever found Borges or Cortazar-- they always seemed to be nearby but out of reach and out of sight-- but I found other interests and still managed to cure my writer's block. I happened to meet @sponge-bob in a public park one day when I was playing basketball with some locals. We got to talking and the conversation moved to crypto. I had invested a lot in mid 2017 but got burned when I didn't pull it out. Spongebob offered to help me get started on steemit, which was a god-send because it gave me a way to motivate myself to write consistently and stay productive (It also led to several delicious pollo mostaza lunches courtesy of my new friend @sponge-bob, a nice change of pace from my budding empanada addiction).

In the meantime I made dozens of friends from all over the world, and I fell in love with a beautiful Norwegian girl named Shirin who's been to more places than I could ever dream of. Together we went to Uruguay, northern Argentina, and Bolivia, sharing strange and incredible experiences. I awoke on my birthday sleeping next to her on a bench in a remote Bolivian bus station in below-freezing temperatures, and-- as miserable as I'm sure that sounds-- I was elated to feel like my day wasn't determined in advance, like I was on an adventure, like I was truly alive.

Seasons changed and eventually Shirin had to return to Norway. I stayed in Buenos Aires, living with a British friend named Ed in a neighborhood called La Boca. Ed and I would stay up til 3 in the morning almost every night, drinking, talking, sharing music. I was lonely without Shirin, but Ed made the time bearable. He never grew bored of conversation, and he was willing to talk about anything I wanted to talk about. To a certain extent, he became like a professional therapist that I didn't need to pay.

I began to grow bored with Buenos Aires after several months there. Other than my daily Steemit posts I wasn't working, so my daily habits became somewhat dull and unhealthy. Despite being crowded, the city felt somewhat empty without Shirin there, and I also exhausted my personal list of sites I needed to see. So, when Shirin offered me to come visit her in Norway then follow her on her semester abroad in Vietnam, I of course leapt at the opportunity....

TO BE CONTINUED