There are days you wake up, grab the whiskey from your bedside table and turn every coffee into an Irish one. I call those my thinking days. I hang around the house in pyjamas and I think about life. I take a long walk down Memory Lane and smile when Granada comes to mind. The town where Spanish meets Arabic, where I met beautiful friends and fell in love. A place that brings sunshine to mind and drunken dancing through the streets. But on thinking days, there is none of that. No thoughts of Greek lovers and nights filled with absinthe. In my head I travel back to a white house in the suburbs, a 30 minute bike ride from the center. 50 because I got lost. I'm in the small kitchen baking brownies and talking with a gorgeous Italian girl. She tells me she dances. Dance is life and she only found out about that not so long ago.
She asked me what I did. I told her I like dancing, that one day I would be a circus artist and I would love to play an instrument too, because people who travel with guitars are awesome. I wouldn't mind writing. Traveling and writing for money. Interviewing people and becoming a part of their lives. Or acting, I would love to act and play different characters every day. Did I mention I like dancing, too? She interrupted my ramblings to ask how old I was. 21. Ooooooh you're only young! You have sooooo much time to figure out what you want to do and who you want to be. I'm 25 and I only just found out I want to dance. But you, you have aaaaaall the time in the world to try and see what your talent is.
I wish I would bump into that girl right now and continue the conversation, four years later. I know chances are small I will see her again when I'm moving only from the couch to the kitchen. But on thinking days that's just what I do. I want to ask her if she still dances, if that is her talent she was looking for all along. And I would tell her I dance too, on hippy festivals in Australian forests. I can juggle with one ball and I bought a ukulele. I can't wait to learn how to play, if only I knew how to tune the damn thing. I write letters and once in a while a blogpost. Acting is still on my to do list. Many dreams to realise. But at the moment, I don't have enough head space to think about a career. Or buying a house and settling down. I'm almost 25 but still naive and I don't mind. Because I know now what I knew then. I travel. And one day, I'll be a professional traveller.
If you would like to sponsor my endless trip around the globe, do let me know.
Now please excuse me, I have a whole lot of thinking to do.