Constantly Searching

Every now and then I get the sudden urge to change my life completely. I start to realize that I have fallen into a routine of some sort and, becoming frustrated, my mind begins to convince me that I'm meant for something else. I've always thought that I was meant for a life of adventure and surprises. I've always known somewhere inside of me that I'm not like everyone else and I don't want to be. I want to tell stories to the world about people and places and food and culture and anything and everything else I can discover in this world. I want to take it all in and help to somehow share it with the world.

I recently met a couple from Germany who was staying at the same Bed and Breakfast in New Jersey as Julio and I. I was so curious and interested in finding out about their lives, what brought them to visit New York and the United States, what food do they enjoy most from home, how they learn to speak English so effortlessly... Something about the interaction with these people sparked something in me and at one point, I made a comment that my husband later brought back to my attention. I said, "There's a bigger world out there than just America." I didn't say it to prove how smart or worldly I thought I was, I just said it because it came to me. And I believe it.

Somehow it seems like people get so involved in their own lives and their own routines and their own selves that they don't open their eyes and see that there are millions of other beings out there in this universe that are chasing after something as well. Or maybe they aren't. Maybe a lot of other people have just settled in to what they have and given into that routine and that life. However, I'd like to think that there are a lot of people out there actively pursuing something--anything. I'd like to believe I'm not the only one who feels destined for adventure and experience. I'd like to believe that the world has been waiting and I need to just seize the day, have at it, and get this show on the road.

Coming Home

I've been thinking a lot about how I don't write anymore. (...or I guess I should say, how I haven't written in so long since I am definitely writing at this very moment.) I have thought about it so much and how much I miss the feeling of finishing a simple blog or article when everything feels like it makes more sense and I can be proud of what I have been able to put into words.

Today I found myself venting to my husband again about how I feel I've lost my creative spark and it occurred to me how ironic my reasoning was. I used to write because I wanted to go to New York and the very thought of that inspired me to put words together. What I told my husband today was that I haven't written because I'm afraid that inspiration is gone and now that we are hoping to get back to New York, I don't know how I will make myself write something when I can't find the inspiration again. (Whatever will I do?) But if what inspired me in the first place was just the prospect of living in New York, would not the actual experience of living there be ten times more powerful as inspiration goes?

I began to think about the short amount of time last year when I was able to go to New York for school and I began to draw out all of those old feelings again. I remember just the way it felt to fly into the city after the sun had gone down and the blackness of the night sky had taken up residence behind the city skyline. It was like arriving in a new world--it was nothing like home and just flying by those sparkling skyscrapers brought tears to my eyes. In many ways, it was just as I had imagined my flight back in would be, but it somehow also overwhelmed me in a way I hadn't expected. I had arrived. I had been writing about this place for two years and I was finally there.

New York is like no other place. One of my favorite things about it is the fact that it has inspired so many people over the years. Say what you will about cold, heartless city life, but I can still remember all the moments I had there that felt so intimate, so extraordinary... and many of them were just between the city and me. I remember how I loved to find the Chrysler Building from wherever I was in the city and how just the fact that I could find it in the skyline made me feel like I hadn't gone too far even if I was neighborhoods away from where I started. I remember walking for blocks with my head tilted upward to experience that sort of vertigo you get from walking while looking up at the tall buildings beside you. I remember taking the train in every morning and out every night and always making sure to get a glimpse of the skyline as it approached or faded away. It is the same feeling I get when I look into my husband's eyes: hope, love, promise, elation, that feeling that everything is right even if it is just for that moment.