Message in a Bottle

In two days I leave for India. I’ve been in Sri Lanka for 18 days now. It will be 20 by the time I leave.

For the last few days I’ve been down south, eating, drinking, smoking and being merry. It was a strange experience, just hanging around, chatting and not doing much of anything else. The guest house we were staying at was fantastic, as it had these lying areas covered with mats and cushions that we just felt no urge to leave. Add to that great food, a view of the beach and smoke and you’ve got a very centralised holiday, but one that is memorable nonetheless.

India I will do alone. I’m looking forward to that. I had a great time hanging out with my buddies, but I didn’t really meet anybody except for them. In the first week I met half the city, while for the next ten days I don’t think I really met anybody new that I wasn’t introduced to by those people I met in the first week.

When you have no choice but to be social, you suddenly find that it’s not to hard to strike up a random conversation. When you already have your established group, on the other hand, you approach less people and generally become less approachable. That’s a fact of life and one that can only be avoided by travelling alone.

So India, here I come!

For the next four months I probably won’t be meeting anybody that I knew from before this trip. Only at new years will friends from before come out to meet me. That should give me enough time to really get to know myself again. In the last few weeks I’ve come to the conclusion that some things in my personality can be improved upon and I think it is easiest to do that in an environment where nobody knows you. At least in that way they will simply accept you for who you are and not judge you by who you were.

What I want to focus on is being more consistently outgoing with the people around me. I want to stop paying quite as much attention to the little guy on my shoulder who always whispers in my ear ‘you shouldn’t say that, that’s stupid, it will only make people laugh at you’. I think ultimately it’s okay to look stupid sometimes, as long as you accept your stupidity gracefully.

I also want to bring my self consciousness under better control. There is no need for me to worry so much about what other people think. What’s more, I find that those people that seem to care the least about what other people think are often the people best (or worst) at interacting and entertaining the people around them.

I don’t have to be so reserved all the time. It gains me little and probably loses me a lot of opportunities.