It is all I can think about. It is like I am being summoned there. I know, perhaps that is overly dramatic but...that is how it feels. I am leaving in about 6 weeks. And it feels like I am planning the adventure of a lifetime. A little more planning is involved for this trip...which I love and hate at the same time. I can’t really just get a ticket and a rental car and then just go. I mean, they require visas and shit like that. This is a BIG trip. Something I have wanted to do my whole life.
My relationship with Australia started young. I had a major girl crush on Olivia Newton John back in the 70s. I wanted to be her when I grew up. That didn’t happen: I can’t sign or act and I did not somehow grow up to be Australian either.
When I was in high school, some girlfriends and I were out goofing around, shopping and what not. I thought it would be fun if we pretended to be from Australia. We put on the best fake accents we could and then set about town with them. In some sort of universal joke that was eventually on me, we met some blokes while donning the fictitious accents. The other girls were in it for the moment. Not me, I was committed for life.
Of course, I met some guy that actually had potential and although he lived miles away from where I did (I liked boys from different schools way better than I did ones in my own school. The whole kissing at the locker thing was just beyond my abilities at that age). And I recall really liking him and he me. Of course, I had to hide when I talked on the phone with him because I couldn’t let my parents hear me talking in a very awful Australian accent!
It was a short lived romance that was largely curtailed because I couldn’t get honest about the whole accent thing. I mean how do you tell someone you were just goofing around and then just didn’t know when to let a gag die? But that was me, in for a penny, in for a pound. Eventually I broke up with him over the phone in a somewhat tearful broken Australian accent. I mean, I had to, he was asking questions like, “why doesn’t your mom have an accent?” Luckily for me my dad was always traveling on business or the whole debacle would have really fell apart. Yes, it would be totally realistic for the kid to be the only one with an accent. Sometimes I really wonder about me.
Anyway, I have wanted to go there for as long as I can remember. And a weird but lovely date with a touring Australian Harley Davidson guy a few weeks ago appeared to be the push I needed to make it happen. While the guy is relatively immaterial in the whole decision, he was the impetus. A lovely evening spent with a great man who has since become a friend. And after hearing the above story, he was like, “ya have to fucking come to Australia!” And not being one to argue (hahaha, that even makes me laugh) I am going.
Life is strange. I was planning on taking a two week trip for my 30th sobriety birthday. That has now since morphed into a longer trip to Australia thanks to the kindness and generosity of my boss, kids and mom for being wiling to hold down the fort without me.
I feel like I do all the time before a trip. Excited, like I am standing on the precipice of great change. Like this is the next twist in my life that is going to bring me closer to insight, understanding and evolution as a human being. I know that things are going to be anything other than what I have planned. But I believe in nudges from the universe and so far, anyway, the ones I have blindly followed, without a great deal of forethought, have been some of the best decisions I have ever made.
So I will spend a little over three weeks touring Australia, New Zealand and Bali. I am so fucking excited! I have a lot of shit to do between now and then. All I want to do is plan the trip but I have to practice what I know to do, slow it all down and take it one step at a time. Do the next right indicated thing and trust that I am being led to my next adventure, my next hardship, my next leveling up.
I love the buzz I get from having a trip on calendar. I love the feeling of adventure and evolution I feel coming. I can’t wait to go but I also know that so much of the fun of travel is in the anticipation. There is the trip you plan and the trip you take. And what happens in between the two is where all the alchemical magic happens.
And I promise, I will not come back with some hokey fucking accent...well, perhaps promise is too strong of a word. But I may come back with some Australian hottie in tow...I mean, stranger things have happened. I am kidding. This trip isn’t about a guy, it is about me celebrating the wonderful, amazing life recovery has given me, one day at a time...in Australia!
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