I want to live.

18 more months of “work” after I get back. It will all be fine–I’ll save money, I’ll go on long weekend vacations.

But I’m just not happy with it. I don’t look forward to anything. Not deeply, at least. A project here, a change there. But it’s all ensconced within the 6am-6pm lifestyle of whatever-it-is-the-fuck I do for work. I’m having a lot of fun out here in Japan—living for the moments, for the friendships, the interactions, reading deeply, thinking deeply, and most of all ignoring the rat race. I’m throwing my attitude of “dude, chill, who cares, it’s all good” and “everything around us is made by people, so it can be changed by people” in the face of the careerist, institutionalist bureaucrats and they are NOT taking it well—to my delight. I still know how to navigate politically, but I’ve jettisoned the one grip they used to have on me–their ability to inflict institutional justice on me. Cuz I just don’t care what they say or write about me. I have no buy in to their culture of climbing the bureaucratic ladder.

It’s helping my soul to be this way. And also, when I first got here I was really telling myself that my work extension wouldn’t go through and that I’d be leaving the job right away. And it was bliss. I am still operating that way to an extent, but the extension and upcoming transfer last week nearly knocked me back into the care-about careerist-stuff ways. Need to shake that.

I think—actually I know—that I’ve been distant, detached, unreachable, and maybe more melancholy than usual. Something along those lines. Like I was having my midlife crisis early. I think I have been that way with everyone and everything, and am just a bit lost during the transition to my next path. My next thing. Raison d’etre, really.

I want something—intangible and indescribable so far—but I’m starting to be able to define it. I think this is the thing, or at least a part of the thing, that I have always been wanting. That I haven’t been able to communicate. That intangible thing that I wanted to explain that night when I fought and fought and couldn’t sleep, but ended up going to the beach and discovering bioluminescent phytoplankton. And many other times I have nearly defined, but never quite have fully expressed.

I want to live.

Like really, go all out and make something kind of live. Like do what these books and tedxs are telling me to do (vagabonding, tim ferrissing, benny lewising, eat pray loving, etc.) I want to feel that feeling of otherworldly connectedness and kindred soulhood with the world, and to embark on a journey that will either make me or kill me. And I don’t just mean a hike through a jungle, or a transatlantic sail, or to start a business. I mean everything. In everything I do. Including a hike through a jungle and a transatlantic sail. But also in opening a health food store in Croatia with my wife, or starting a sucessful blog about zen living or language learning, or opening up a school for teaching people how to travel—and doing it all while roaming from Portugal to Cambodia. Then again, I don’t necessarily care what it is exactly what I do. Just that I do it with that otherworldy passion, and that I discover the connection to the world and how to live.

I think I want… to ignite. Reform. Refresh. In Passion.

I have things I need to work on. I need to open up more, and accept more, and appreciate more, and respect more. And when I do this I know that my passion will open up to the world and we will work together.

And we will live.