
Half time. It’s about seven months and two weeks. I was planning, saving and calculating for 15 months. So this is it. What is about to come will be shorter than what’s behind me.
Weird thought. I have a very contradictory feeling about the past months…
On one level, so much has happened that it can easily fill three or four years of my ‘normal’ life. There are so many memories, places, people, circumstances, encounters, I can not wrap my head around it. I browse through my pictures and so many things pop back into my head…
I see so many postings on my Facebook of all the places i ‘liked’ during this trip – and sometimes have a hard time to tell from the back of my head in which city this was, or what I did there.
It’s like layers and layers of memories, like sediments, little grains of sand that sink to the ocean floor and come back up as layers in a stone wall, where I can re-live this trip like a geologist.
On the other level, it all seems like I’m just gone a couple of weeks, it just cannot be half way through. It feels like I was in Buenos Aires last week, and at the pool in Fitzroy yesterday.
But still, half way. Well, that depends actually on when I am coming back.
Am I coming back?
I mean, I do ask myself the question, what do I want to do after this is over. There are endless possibilities… I could just ask for a longer leave with my work. Right now, I am a file in a closet in Human Resources, and for them it does not make a difference when I would come back.
Well, I’ve been in touch with work occasionally on a number of things, and I know my unit and my director would like to have me back. Good to know. Good feeling. But not the answer to the question, necessarily.
One factor is of course money. I will run out of it sooner or later, and even if the budget seems under control right now and I can manage the initial 15 months, any unforeseen circumstance, or prolongation will mean I have to spend less in each city.
Do-able.
But still, there’s a point when my bank account will show a big fat zero. And I know I’ll freak out way before that happens, when I do the monthly transfer from my savings account onto my bank account, or balancing my credit card, vaporizing the figures…
I could prolong my leave, and find a job… somehow. Like the working visa in Australia. Even though I’d make a horrible bar tender or host in a restaurant, forgetting the order the moment they tell me. I’d be in the kitchen: someone out there wanted some meat. Precisely. Fail.
Still, some people do, they jump off, and land on their feet.
But then, maybe I’m more the ‘security’ type. I’m not good at jumping off into the unknown. I like everything prepared and planned for. Not knowing how I’ll get by in the next few months is a weird feeling to me.
Well, kid of parents of the German post-war generation, having a secure public job for the foreseeable rest of my live is probably implanted. It’s all pretty settled. Still, you ponder the thought: what if…?
But the most probably out come will be me going back to my job, maybe with one or two months more time to spare myself the horrible rainy Belgian ‘winter’, and then start working in a new job.
Another factor: Madonna is in the studio! She’ll release an album for sure sometime this year, and go on tour. I am freaking out, she just has to wait until I’m back, and can go on tour with her again. Otherwise my planning is, pardon my French, seriously fucked.
Ok, now, how can this be a factor in it all…? But if you know me a bit, you know how much fun I have on tour with Madonna, being totally knackered after seeing five shows in ten days, and maybe 17 of one and the same tour on three continents, with old friends and fans, and new people I meet…
It’s a totally crazy thing… but I want to see at least 100 shows in my life, and I have to make some ground. I’m currently at #52 (which does not put me on top of the fans, there are many many fans who have seen her far more often….)
So, long long blog post short, I will probably prolong my leave until 28 February 2015. Like this I have a bit more time, can celebrate my 40th birthday in silence with myself somewhere on this trip, and then head back.
I’d probably come back a week or two before starting to work, so that I can look for an apartment quietly, and get a few things settled.
Which means, I still have a few weeks extra time, that I have to fill…. Southern Hemisphere, for sure, as it’ll be summer there.
I’m pondering a few options, like another stint to South America, to see new places and meet some friends again. Or head the other way to Australia, South African Airlines has an affordable flight to Perth… I’ll see. And I’ll report.