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Vancouver, Canada - January 19, 2010
It has been already ten days since I came back from Mexico. I am in Vancouver now house sitting.
Photo: House sitting in Vancouver - the cats, my companions here.
My trip has not been a two weeks vacation, as for some, but two years of my life, a lifestyle. People can rationalize about what such experience of doing it and coming back can be, but no person can really grasp it unless they haven't been there themselves.
It is not the same as going on an adventure for a month or two from the safety of your house. In order to experience and discover what it is like being a nomad traveling through countries with no way back and open road ahead, you have to be able to leave whatever your life was behind and have the courage to step into unknown and new, and physically, mentally and emotionally agree to the one and only truth from now on - that you have nowhere to go back to and you don't know what your life will be tomorrow. This definitely sounds like fun and very romantic, but it is not for cowards or theorists committed to play their lives save.
Coming back to Vancouver, where I spend a few years, is especially difficult as I am finding it now. The West Coast is a peculiar place, where people seem friendly but the society is quite cold inside. The West Coast is different from the East. I don't know exactly why, but if I was going to generalize this would be one thing I would say about Vancouver for example. It is tough to start here, make connections, make friends. I have been lucky so far, but coincidently most of these people came from somewhere else and share my view point of the local dynamics.
I didn't go traveling from my home, but left from a place where I was living temporarily. It's been two years now of hard core traveling for me. Counting the years though, I can safely say that I have been on the road for much longer. The last place I considered my home was Japan, where I lived for eight years. I still consider it my second home after Poland, where I was born, except that Poland became more like a memory of where I grew up. In a way just a part of the bigger picture. Am I Polish ? Sure. But I am not just that. I feel like my heart is split between many cultures, and I don't belong to a particular one. Some things within me are more Japanese than Polish, I have something Canadian in me as well and there is also a Latin American Stan which I can't ignore. I can't also ignore the fact that on the personal level I relate to the Americans I met on my travels and it makes me wonder how my life would have been if I immigrated to the USA instead of Canada. I like the dynamics and the friendliness of ordinary strangers I experienced in the United States. There is also me as an artist and an engineer, and me with the personality which mends all these parts together, making me the Ancient Nomad.
I will be re-designing this blog to make it easier to navigate. Please bear with me and let me know if there is anything that in your opinion I should change or add. Don't forget to dream and ignore those who try to kill it. Everything starts with a thought and a vision, and if you ignore your heart's desires - there will be nobody to comfort you at the end when the time to face your regrets finally comes. Compromising can make life easier for now, but it is not for those who want to explore their life's full potencial.
My life has always been about freedom and I shall continue to walk this path.
Safe travels ! ........... Stan
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stan@ancientnomad.com
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