"You'll never have enough money"
At the suggestion of my father to help sort through all of the constant thoughts I have floating in my head a mile a minute. I will yet again, attempt to be consistent with blogging.
It all started normally enough, I had called my dad upset, crying and complaining basically about wishing to relinquish being an adult; rent, phone bill, gas and electric, car note etc. I’m 24 a recent college graduate, training to be an elite sprinter and intend on pursuing both MA and Ph.D programs in African Studies to emphasize (for now) Social and political formations of race concentrating on the Dominican Republic and Haiti.
Now this all sounds good and well, but it’s like I get into these moods, where i have a dizzying and desperate need to fly away! Not from anything or anyone, but just to cast off conventions and expectations and responsibilities and just GO! Which is quite difficult when again, you have bills and impending student loan debts. So then I got to thinking and worrying.
What if I never accomplish the freedom that I am seeking?
This of course lead me to thinking even more about hatching plans to flee, and even writing this, I am plotting even more!
I went through my inbox and looked up an email from a traveling Comrade I met over the summer during an organized protest after the Travyon Martin verdict. I was a primary organizer for a coalition; Justice for Trayvon Martin, Los Angeles and found myself leading masses of people onto the 10 freeway to shut down rush hour traffic after being belted with metal pellets, bean bags, billie clubs and fist from the LAPD the previous night and that day. I lead us on a 9 hour march from Leimert Park to Hollywood and Highland and then organized the take over of Beverly Hills’ Rodeo Plaza that following Wednesday.
So throughout the summer I was speaking and attending rallies and marches it seemed like daily and met incredible people. One was Danny. A real adventurer who spoke 5 language, was a yogi, a boxer, a Life Foodarian and baseball fan from New York. He left such an impression on me with regards to travel, to the struggle again injustice. As an Irish American, he was heavily involved in combatting imperialism and white supremacy and had been at organized rallies and demonstrations from the east coast to Brazil, Dublin and everywhere.
He told me something about travel and experiencing life as he had. “You will never have enough money, ever. Just go! Put some shit on a credit card, or take out a small loan and go. Work your way around if you need to, but don’t wait.”
Coming from someone who had lived in Brazil, Haiti, Cuba, Mexico and God knows where else by now. I figure, he’s right.
In one of my posts I talked about the graduation blues, that dull gnawing from having concluded a massive chapter of what you’re ‘supposed’ to do in life, to being left with the emptiness of now searching for a new way to prove yourself through some sort of achievement or attainment. And while I write out these goal lists and plans about the next institution to spend money and rack up more debt for a degree, the only thing I seem to TRULY want to do is travel.
Not vacation, but like live a different life for a bit. My friend and I have a deal to be beach bums for 1 week straight after this year’s spring graduation when he finishes his degrees in Pan African Studies and Political Science. Its something small, but Brazil is also in the works and I’m extremely motivated to make that happen!
See my ultimate fear is being buried, or whatever with experiences left to be had, places left unseen, people I never met or loved or experienced. I want to really live and I am sure a lot of us feel like that.. So let’s just go. If we fall, fuck it, nothing lasts forever.
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