Thursday, January 31, 2008

Too Much Coffee

That has been the flavour of this week. Too much coffee.

At the moment my journey around the world, the free flowing easy going travel with no worries has take a severe detour towards one of the busiest times in my life.

While the weekends are still lots of fun, which is clearly demonstrated by my trips from London to Newquay, Big Wave Surfing in Ireland and Australia Day in London, my Monday to Friday is taken up with work work and a little more work.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing though. Everything has their place in life, and a busy time in London has it's place in my life at the moment. It's winter throughout the rest of this hemisphere which means that long days spent at the beach simply won't happen, and even if they could the day only goes from 8.30 am till 4.30 pm, the rest is full of darkness.

So while the days are short, the weather is freezing, and while the only reference we have that the sun still exists is it's reflection off the moon at night when the clouds clear, it's probably the best place to be.

For one, my best mate Roland is here in London with me, and I'm sad to say that he'll be heading off in a week or two to start the next stage of his own round the world trip. I could go in to details of where he's going to be go, but I know that by the end of this weekend the plans would have changed at least 3 times............... maybe 4.

Of course, being so busy and having long days can be known to take its toll.

The other day I got home from work and picked up the guitar to strum away my worries, but when I started to play my favourite Stone Temple songs I couldn't for the life of me remember the chords to the songs, and even when I had checked the net for them I couldn't remember the strumming pattern.

For the first time in a long time, instead of being relaxing, strumming the guitar actually worked me up more.

I threw on a pair of thongs and a hoody, grabbed the house keys and went for a walk down the street. As I walked I thought about where I was, what I was doing, how my plans had changed and just how I had got into the situation I was in...... and the further I walked, the more I cast my mind back to how the whole trip started and how I actually arrived at the situation, rather then the situation I was in.

Thinking about and reliving the series of moments leading up to the present made me realise that in almost any occasion, no matter how bad it was, the past makes it more then alright to be in that moment. Not only that, it goes a long way towards the realisation that the future is going to hold even more of those great times to later look back on.

After about 30 minutes of walking I realised I was in thongs, shorts, and a hoody, felt better about EVERYTHING and that I wasn't sure if my toes were still there.

Luckily that moment coincided with me walking past an Irish pub which has in the past lead me to having a pint or 10, 0000.

While I sat in the pub watching the football, enjoying a beer, and slowly getting the feeling back in my toes I couldn't help but smile not only about the things that brought me to London, but also all the opportunities I've had by being able to travel so easily from here, like the Big Wave Surfing in Mullaghmore, making a short flick with Al Mennie Tony Plant and Duncan Scott and getting a video posted on the Billabong XXL site (thanks to Al and Duncan) next to some of the big names in the business.

When you think about it, really think about, life is simply amazing.

1 comment:

Beach Bum said...

Soak it all up dude - as they say in Ireland - "you're a long time dead".