The Surrender Project: Day 23: A Thinker and A Snorer
After waking up around 9:45 I knew that today was the day to leave Jaipur. I had recently reached out to somebody I met in India about the potential of meeting up and he said I should check out Pushkar before we do. This felt like enough of a sign for me to buy a bus ticket to Pushkar so that is what I set out to do. Normally it is pretty easy to just go online and buy a bus ticket to wherever you want to go, but as I mentioned before there is one slight problem for me. When I go to fill out all the details it will not let me switch the phone numbers country code to The United States, only India. This in the past has been a feature that lead me to missing a bus, and almost missing another so I wanted to find a better way. I mapped the place where the bus was going to pick people up, at a travel stand about a fifteen minute walk away. I thought might as well just stretch the legs a bit and head over there and do it the old fashioned way, purchasing a ticket in person. The only issue is my shoes were still at my friends from the wedding a day or two prior, the only shoes I had were his that he let me borrow for the wedding. This wouldn’t be much of an issue, except he typically wears a size 9, I am a size 10.5-11. The first block was fine but as I got closer to my destination my feet were starting to kill me, which I would later find a few blisters on. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. Eventually I got to the travel agency and went to buy a ticket. My phone had said there was a bus at 12:00 and a bus at 3:00. The man running this stand didn’t speak any English, but we easily enough figured out to buy the bus for 3:00. He then tells me to follow him and we walk a block or so away before he points at a bus and waves to me like I should get on. I shake my head and try to communicate that it is for 3:00. This gets lost in translation and he shakes his head, telling me to get on the bus. Obviously this is not possible as I still have my friends shoes and I do not have my luggage. A few bystanders come over to help out, eventually the guy gets a little angry at me and rips the ticket up, handing me back the 250 rupees and holding up his hands as he walks away. Apparently there is no 3:00 bus, the 3 that he was agreeing to when I bought the ticket was the duration of the bus ride, not the time the bus leaves. I know there is a bus later in the day as I checked online before I made the walk over here, but the guys around me tell me there is not, so I walk away empty handed. It is 11:45 or so and I walk back, basically hobbling as the shoes eat away at the heel and sides of my feet. This is not what peak Henry looks like. I am not overall annoyed by the situation, but the shoe thing is testing my overall patience and I can tell I am just ever-so-slightly hangry. I throw in the headphones for the walk back because this way I do not have to pretend to be engaged with strangers on the street or excited when they stop to talk to me. I decide to grab a bite on the way home, a sandwich which consists of white bread, paneer, potato, and then coated in something and deep fried, topped with onions and spicy sauces. Talk about a healthy way to start your day! I get back and immediately pop the shoes off, hopping online to purchase a ticket. Luckily, Indian people are always looking to help and a guy at the hostel notices me trying to buy a ticket and insists that he will buy it on his app so he can forward me any updates about the bus. This works for me, as some of you know the tediousness of going through websites that continually crash or don’t accept payment for something as simple as a bus ticket test my patience more than anything else. We get the ticket booked, he forwards me all the information, and we are all set to get on with the day.
I am still hungry, so order four eggs and a coffee at the hostel as I sit down to do some more reading of Four Thousand Weeks. The book continues on a wonderful stretch, focusing less on just the idea of presence, but bringing up multiple other points of living and views of life. This blog isn’t going to be another write up only based off of a book, but there is one quote I have to mention, “there is a terrific fear of being pinned down, of entering space and time completely, and of being the unique human that one is.” Mostly the last part, about actually being the unique human that each of us is, of just being who you are and not trying to be something you’re not. That realistically nobody gives a fuck what you do with your life, so do whatever feels right to you and whatever you enjoy. At 80 years that one person from your friend group will not care if you made millions as an executive or lived in a small apartment as an artist. At the end of it all, it really doesn’t matter anyway. It is like the idea of the minuscule amount of time we are on this planet compared to how long the world and universe have existed. Cosmically, we do not matter at all. And yeah, this can be taken in a negative way but I always see it as freeing, that these anxieties or choices we make don’t have the insane weight that we sometimes place on them. I mean they do, but they don’t hahaha. There is a reason people have written entire books on this concept, so I am going to hop off of it because at this moment I think I am just going to confuse myself. Moral of the story: follow your gut, follow what you love, do what you want to do with the people you want to do it with, and don’t care what others think of it. Oh, and read this book because Burkeman does a great job putting these points into perspective.
Enough of the book talk for now, back to me reading as I sip my coffee, applying the lesson from yesterday and doing exactly what I want. When the bottom of the coffee cup is visible I know it is time to start writing and write the blog from yesterday as I listen to some music. I realize I listen to music when I do basically anything. Writing? Music. Reading? Music. That’s all I can think about for now haha, but lately those two things take up many hours of my day. After I finish up my blog I get a call from my friend who has my shoes and is going to drop them off. We decide to go get a farewell chai before we say our goodbyes so I hop on the back of the moped to cruise a few streets away. I thank him for all his hospitality and for everything over the last few days and we go our separate ways. I go back inside and read a bit more before getting an Uber motorbike to the bus, this time going way too early because I really do not want another eventful bus situation. In hindsight they are always fun and create a bit of drama for a few hours, but not something I would choose to seek out. I get a buttered roti as a snack as I wait for the bus, as there is nothing else close by to get. A stray dog wanders over to sit at my feet and hope to be fed some buttery goodness. This good boy, however, did not need any more bread if you know what I mean. The difference between the stray dogs in Southeast Asia and India is that there is so much garbage and food scraps all over the ground in India that some of the dogs overeat. There are some chunky pups in India versus the skin and bones dogs in SEA. This good boy was without a doubt in that “chunky pup” category and he had the biggest grin on his face as he watched me eat my roti. I felt a bit bad for the fella, but honestly he probably is loving his life at the moment and doesn’t see any reason for concern. After I finished and threw away the tinfoil, this guy gets up and waddles away, stopping a few feet away to turn back and look at me like “come on dude, I just wanted one little nibble!” I just mention the dog because he put me in such a great mood getting on the bus, he seemed like such a goofball and it made me happy.
Luckily, no bus fiasco this time and boarding is a breeze. I get to my seat and dig back into my book for a bit before I hop on a few phone calls for an hour or so and catch up with some people. About 30 or so minutes away from Pushkar I felt my blood sugar or something plummeting, probably from eating basically only white bread during the day, and was legitimately concerned I was going to pass out. Like I got insanely hot and sweaty and then cold, and I had no energy to even like read or do anything. I knew it would pass, and weirdly it made me think that maybe this is what millions of people deal with multiple times a day because they do not have access to food. This made it a pretty manageable crash for me. Like I knew that I was going to get off the bus soon and go devour half a restaurant and not even consider the cost. Imagine getting off the bus and then having to find a quiet piece of street to sleep on, going to bed because there is nothing you can do for your hunger. It is mind-blowing that this is a reality for so many people. It is hard to really grasp what that is like. Yeah, I can sit here and envision it, but to really be in the mental state of somebody in that position isn’t something I can do. Be nicer to beggars.
I got off the bus and wandered the streets until I found a restaurant. It was around 10:30 when I was done and I decided to walk the thirty minutes to the hostel to get some movement in after the meal. About 15 minutes in I found myself on some back streets leaving the main part of the city and I had to stop walking and pause for a moment; it was silent. I heard crickets chirping and some very faint music from far off in the distant. This was the first time in India where I was outside and it wasn’t full of sounds. It felt so peaceful to just listen to the sound of my shoes crunching in the gravel and say hi to all the stray dogs sleeping on the quiet streets. It is a fun game to see how quickly dogs will pick up on your energy. Like if I walk past a dog wandering the streets and give him a smile and feel love towards him I swear they pick up on it. I saw this black mutt dog in the dimly lit streets and in my head I was so happy to see him, almost giving him a smile and a “hey buddy” but not audibly saying it. He started wagging his tail and walked next to me for a bit. Maybe it is a coincidence that he was just happy to see a person in general, but it is more fun for me to think there is something special in dogs ability to pick up on that stuff. Anyway, I get to my hostel, pay for three nights and go check into my room. Unfortunately it looks nothing like the photographs I saw online and is a bit of a tight room with no privacy curtains or anything. Honestly, I do not really care that much about curtains and stuff, just wasn’t what I was anticipating. I brush it off, grab my computer, go to edit and publish the blog and wrap up everything I needed to. It is probably 12:30 am by the time I come back into the room and I was feeling like watching part of a movie. It wasn’t really loading so watched a few trailers on YouTube. As I am watching the previews on my laptop with noise cancelling AirPods in, I hear this loud and fast breathing so I take one out to stop the video. One of the guys was snoring so outrageously loud that I didn’t think it was a snore at first. I started to get literally concerned for his health. It sounded like a metallic bass sound generated by a computer. It was fucking LOUD. I just hope it stops and turn up the volume in my headphones and ignore it for a bit. I hear it again and this time he gets out of bed to fix the AC or something. There is a Spanish dude (I came to learn this in the morning) across from me who calls the guy out, “do not change the AC, you are the reason none of us can sleep right now, you sound like a fucking animal!” With mild concern and shock in his Spanish accent. The Snorer does not understand a word and just looks at the Spanish guy who goes, “English?” And the snorer just shakes his head. I laugh a bit but not much we can do about it. He must have not fallen back asleep for a bit because now it is around 1:30 am and I am going to try and sleep. However, when I take out my headphones I hear people right outside like singing and laughing. Which normally wouldn’t be too bad but the door doesn’t shut all the way because you can only latch it by locking it, and we cannot lock it because one of the guys is not back yet. Whatever, this is the reality of hostels sometimes. I try to go to sleep with my AirPods in, just to remind you they are noise cancelling, but do not make it very far because even with my pods in and listening to music all I can hear is this dude snoring. I can fall asleep to music just fine, even if it is sorta loud, but this guy snoring? No chance. I honestly am laughing out loud at the fact that a human can make so much noise with their throat. I turn up my music and try to focus on random thoughts or daydreams to make me fall asleep. Nothing is successful, going in and out of daydreams and just listening to the homie snoring. I look at my phone and it is 3:00 am. Sometime in the next hour is probably when I actually fall asleep, only to wake up what feels like every 30 minutes to this guy. Anyway, not sure why I am going off on a tangent about a dude snoring in my blog, but I guess you can tell it got to me a bit.
It is 10:30 pm on day 24 as I read through this blog to edit and post it before I pass out and catch up on some of the sleep I didn’t get from last night. For complete transparency because it feels true to the theme of this project as a whole, this isn’t my most proud blog. It feels a little bit lazy to me, and maybe it is because when I started writing today it was the first time that I didn’t feel like writing the blog. I didn’t have any revelations from the day, no lessons that I felt compelled to share. Honestly my mind is still a bit preoccupied in the Four Thousand Weeks book which felt like a bit of a needed blow to slow down some of my feverish dreaming of the biggest things I can accomplish. My mind is playing a bit of a battle with itself, which I already know it shouldn’t be because this is all focused on the future, and I need to not be focused on that right now. Nevertheless, it is hard not to think ahead at times, and I have been. The battle between going back and getting a comfortable good paying job and sticking to some side projects that will eventually keep growing or finding a completely new career or taking another random risk like hiking a trail or roadtripping. This book is making me really think about why I want to do these massive feats in my life, if the reason is genuine to me or if I feel like I need to do something crazy to make me feel content that I didn’t waste my life doing something boring. Is it because I value the actual thing, or because I think it will be a cool thing to do and my ego needs to be rewarded for doing something cool. Yet what I miss most and want most in life is community, friends, and family. Why would I want to go after something else if those are not a part of it? I loved this book because it is making me think about my desires and who/what I want to be. I love to be challenged so much. I love that I am sitting here at 10:40 pm, now in a deep thinking headspace, feeling lost in the best way possible because I am challenged by a book that is making me rethink large components of my life. I think part of me was unsure of how to share this earlier in the blog, or if I even wanted to. This paragraph feels like my journal now, a way for me to just think out loud and not try and recap some random day. I am aware that my mind goes different places quite fast, I get shit from my family sometimes about wanting to do one thing one day, and a completely other thing the next. Maybe it is because I think out loud to people a lot so I share every idea I have and those ideas change. I realized this evening that I even do this in my blog, talk about these desires to soak life of all the lemonade possible, but then the next day talk about just enjoying the glass of lemonade that you have. Maybe this is all just another reminder to stop trying to think so much and be more present. I do not know if I mentioned this, but I went to therapy for three or four months about 14 months ago. I went because I didn’t know what direction I wanted to go in life and felt lost, and I wanted to understand why I reacted the way I do to death. (Side note, I freaking loved it and I learned so much about myself that helps me immensely today. You do not need to be depressed to go to therapy. I would without a doubt recommend every single person I know to go. I know this isn’t the case for everybody, but I would look forward to going every week. I could sit there with him and just share all these crazy thoughts I had or every concern or event in my life and he would organize them and deliver them back to me concisely, with explanations as to why I am the way I am. Then tell me to stop thinking and be present, lol. I absolutely loved it and only stopped because I moved to CO). Anyway, my therapist told me to stop thinking so much, that I am a mind person, that my mind moves so fast and is always moving, that the magic for me is in the present. This is probably why whenever I read a book that talks about the power of the present and I live in the present I get these jolts of energy where I feel like I just found the secret sauce to life. Because for me individually, the present is the cure to my brain always going so fast. It is a weird little balance between thinking and being present for me. Because to be quite honest and just say it, I love my mind. I love to think. I love the way I think and view the world. But what I am ever so slowly realizing is that sometimes it is better for me not to think, to just be. More practice just being in the moment. With that I will officially close this out. I am quite happy that I ended this blog the way I did, as now the entirety of it feels more genuine to me and also it helped me clear my mind this evening. This last paragraph was literally what my journal entries look like, I write them as if I am talking to somebody else and sharing a story with them. So, thanks for tuning in to yet another day, especially for dialing into my ever-thinking mind in this last paragraph.
