December 2014 | The colorful wolf

Traveling memories

It's odd how the act of traveling can make you remember things so much more vividly. Just sitting in the plane to Japan I remembered vividly my last cycling trip, and the many before it. My memories seem to more strongly associated with places than with people. Maybe that's because the people end up migrating elsewhere? Or maybe it's because people change more rapidly over time than places do? With places I focus on similarities compared to the past, whereas with people I can't help but notice their differences.

Next year it will have been 10 years since I first went to Japan and changed my life forever. It's when I made the most severe mental change in my whole life so far. There have been many small, incremental improvements to 'the concept of me' over time, but Japan was definitely a version 2.0. Hopefully there weren't too many regressions.. I need a testing framework for my personality..

I'm currently sitting in the domestic terminal of Narita, waiting for a flight to Naha. It's been a long time since I've been there, yet it feels like going back to somewhere familiar and safe. It's not quite like feeling at home, yet close to it. It's more like a feeling of unguardedness and a ridiculously high (over)confidence that nothing bad can happen, or at least that I'm prepared for all bad things that might happen. Just like every other time I went to Japan in the last 7 years, that feeling starts right after I board the plane at Heathrow or Amsterdam. It's not an end-goal kind of feeling -the feeling alone is not enough to satisfy the mind- but it provides a foundation from which to start doing more extreme things. The only other place I've ever been to that felt the same was the Seychelles.

No goal for this blogpost, except perhaps to collect a few loose thoughts before the year ends. I'm still learning how to act my age; my mental age seems to age less fast than my physical age. But I feel that I'm catching up. And the more I catch up, the more clear my future life decisions become. 2014 was a fantastic year. 2015 will be even better. There are still countless achievements in life left to be unlocked.

You can't always get what you want?

Sometimes I buy something nice for myself. Something that is not the best-value-for-money product, but something a bit more expensive. It's better, of course, just not quite as betterer as you might expect from the price tag. Yet, unquestionably, it's better. I enjoy such a purchase greatly because I know I bought something good, but I also feel guilty about having spent money when I didn't really have to. After such a purchase I feel like I need to stop spending for a while, so even if there's something else that I really want, I'll delay buying just for the sake of it, even though I can afford it.

This seems to happen to me with complete disregard to price range. I'll feel bad about going for the slightly more expensive meal (~20GBP), the slightly more expensive Lego set (~50GBP), the slightly more expensive headphones (~200GBP) or the slightly more expensive bike (~1000GBP). Just reading back what I just wrote makes me feel guilty for buying all those things, even though I know I can afford them and enjoy all of them.

As you get older there's more and more purchases coming up: a car, a house, a hotel, a planet, a galaxy. I feel the need to have worked harder for each thing that I own because I taught myself that if you want to buy something, you should suffer. The idea of "I just bought that and didn't even break a sweat" implies a never-ending guilt trip to me. But only if you buy nice things. Buying crap things is OK. You don't feel the need to suffer so much when you're buying crap things. The problem with that is, you're buying crap things.

Perhaps I just like tormenting myself. I'd just really like it if I could be happy about the nice things that I buy without feeling guilty about it..

I was going to call this post "You can always get what you want" and make it about how I can afford the nice things instead of the average things, but a) the tone was very dickish and b) I didn't actually get what I want cause I don't want a guilt trip and I have one. Damn you, Rolling Stones, you were right after all.