Amazon

I had a great idea to save up some money for my trip.

 

Instead of paying someone to store all my old stuff I would sell as many of my old books, cd's and dvd's as possible ( except a few very rare tomes ) and then make a packet.

 

Sadly I had no idea what the costing of packaging was like and I made the mistake of not forward buying some dirty cheap jiffy bags.

 

After spending most of a weekend listing literally hundreds of books and dvd's I had already a small collection of items to post before I headed off to work this morning.

 

Fore noted to "Sold. Dispatch now" the items that had made a sale I was conscious that I did not want to get bad negative feedback as a seller right away so I went to the post office at lunchtime and grabbed the first enveloped that they would fit in and went up to the counter to post them on.

 

Afterwards I checked my receipt and I found that if you include the fee that amazon take, the cost of the bag ( almost 80p each ) and the actually postage cost as well that I had made a loss on all my first four items.

 

Not exactly the start of my promising savings drive that I had been hoping and so with over 200 other items that may go any minute I decided right away to order some inexpensive jiffy bags and have them sent right to my office to minimise the delay.

 

Next time that I sell anything I wont make the same mistake again, and this time I might actually make a bit of a profit .. well, who knows !!!

The itiniary changes yet again

I would have liked to see all of the ancient seven wonders of the world, sadly six have been lost to the sands of time and so the pyramids of Giza is all that was left for me to visit.

 

I would like to visit all of the seven natural wonders of the world, yet they are all spread out across the globe and to reach them all is no simple or cheap journey.

 

I would like to visit all my friends, but again they are spread out all around the world far and wide.

 

I would like to visit all the wondrous places of my childhood fantasies, from Timbutu to Xanadu and everywhere in between, but that would be a journey of such epic extravagance for a man of my age, wealth and current social standing that it would rule my life for years to come in order to achieve it.

 

I have dreams, and I long to make them realities, but one of the biggest dreams is to find a sweet loving wife and settle down, and that would be made all the harder if I chose to give up a house, a job and a career forever in order to go chasing the wondrous world of my youth.

 

With my family and friends around me, I could pretend to play the prodigal son, go gallivanting around the world and hope that they are all there waiting for me with open arms upon my return, but that would be asking and expecting too much of anyone, as well as being totally unfair.

 

With this trip I have to be both pragmatic and realistic, accept that what I would chose to do if I have unlimited time and money is not always in line with what I can actually achieve without losing everything I currently have worked so hard to accomplish.

 

I must come to terms with what is real, what is possible and what really matters, and right now some of these places I would really like to visit but maybe this time right here and now is not my time to view them.

 

I am still young, 31 is not old, frail and grey and as long as I do not cut all my ties to the past it may be possible to do many of the things I want now and the rest later on in life.

Why Travel

I had a nice long chat with my mother today about all sorts of things, and of course my trip was high up on the agenda for many reasons.

 

It was a nightmare to chose where and why for certain places and I had to agree that it would take a lifetime to visit everywhere, see everyone and do everything that I wanted.

 

The main dilemma is that humans being are, almost by habit, walking wish demanding machines. All our lives we think, if only I can do this, I'd love to do that, why cant something be possible and so the more we live the more we want.

 

It is true that the happiest people I have met have also been the poorest, with little vision for what life could offer and almost no understanding of the many possibilities that are open to us as human beings.

 

Now I'm not saying that it is possible for anyone to just leave their home, reach civilization, travel the world and find the perfect job with their ideal partner, but it is true that in some circumstances ignorance is bliss, and the facts and possibilities that we fill our heads with the more the agony of choice clouds our thinking and makes us unhappy with our current situation.

 

My mother and I were in complete agreement that If I was in a job that I liked and was settled down with a wife and kids that my desire to travel would me much muted, and I would not even seriously contemplate the dream of every truly travelling around the world, let alone set myself a timeframe and go about finding out the costing of various trips.

 

I do not deny that I have always wanted to travel and explore the world, but it is without doubt the fact that I am so un-contented with my current life that has lit the fire under my feet enough for me to make this massive sacrifice.

 

Right here, right now, this travel is something that I feel I am drawn towards but equally it is that I feel nothing substantial keeping me here that is what is allowing my otherwise rational and down to earth mentality to be seduced by the desire to see other places, meet other people, and do what so few actually get a chance to attempt.

 

At first I thought that the trip would be a success if I got to see everything, came back and then wrote a massive best seller from my experiences and lived forever on the proceeds.

 

Then I mellowed to the logic that it would be a success if I got to see most of the things, came back and wrote a frailly successful book enough to break into the writing world.

 

Now, with actually having to try and pay for this trip, and already seeing the effort that is going into it, and the many sacrifices that I am having to make, I have come to the conclusion that it would be a success if I came back in one piece undamaged, having seen enough of the things that I really had my heart set on enough to make the sacrifices I am making worth it and to have been able to keep my house.