Guess who’s back…. Back again…. Yup, after a year and a half
of radio silence I’ve decided to give this whole blog thing another shot (and
am already off to a cracking start, opening with a dated Eminem
reference). To anyone who doesn’t
actually know me in person who may have been following this blog and who had assumed
from my unexplained disappearance that I’d probably died in some kind of
bizarre elephant/cycling/cliff diving/tuk-tuk related incident, you can
officially release that breath you’ve been holding in for the past 17 months. I
am alive and well.
The truth is, building and maintaining a successful blog of
a personal nature such as this one requires a certain type of personality: one
unaverse to the idea of self-promotion and so unwaveringly confident in the
objective value of their own thoughts, feelings, and experiences that they’re
willing to regurgitate anything and everything that pops into their minds into
the public sphere… I’m looking at you, basically all of Twitter. I’m much more your classic “tortured artist”
type: possessive of a nagging, insatiable desire to create while at the same
time convinced that at least 95% of the resulting creations have absolutely no
societal value whatsoever. (i.e. this is all a bunch of shit!) In fact, I
nearly binned this whole blog post after that last sentence, because who really cares what’s going on in
the inner workings of my mind, but then thought well, that pretty much illustrates my point, doesn’t it? Might as well keep going, and now I’m basically
just writing out my own internal dialogue as it happens, which isn’t weird at
all. This is why I’m so much fun at parties. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is
that it’s easy enough to write about all the wild/funny/scary/crazy things that
happen to me while I’m out there on the road, but once I settle down into any
sort of domesticity and those types of situations give way to a comparatively
mundane existence, the demons of self-doubt come out to play and I no longer
feel like I have anything meaningful to contribute. As a result, the blog falls
by the wayside.
And that’s basically what’s happened over the last year and
a half. I’ve settled… sort of. After a few months spent back in the States I took the plunge and relocated to Chiang Mai. For the last
13 months I have been living the good life of cheap rent, cheap food, cheap booze
and weekly massages. While it has been calmer than the previous year and a half
on the road, it’s not been completely without blog-worthy incidents. I visited Myanmar, Malaysia, and Singapore; took a three-month winter break to explore Australia and New
Zealand (because I’m a New Englander at heart and I miss snow!); and just
last month nearly died in a freak floor fan explosion (say that five times fast) in my own condo in Chiang Mai. That
last one might be a little bit over dramatic, but I assure you I’ll never own a
circular fan again!
 |
| Beware the spinning blades of death... |
So that’s where I’m at. Adjusting to life in a new culture;
trying (and failing miserably) to get a handle on the Thai language; and now,
finally, giving in to that voice that’s been keeping me up at night, yearning
to create something – anything – even if it’s shit. What that all means for the
future of this blog, I can’t say. Maybe this is a turning point, and from here
on out it’ll be all regular updates and shameless self-promotion. Maybe I'll even post some photos to Instagram while I'm at it! Or maybe I’ll
mysteriously vanish in a few months’ time. I make no promises either way. That’s
perhaps not the best marketing strategy in the world, but you know what, screw marketing! I’m an
artist and I don’t give a fuck what you think! Okay, nope. Dial it back, Kanye… How about this: I’m
just gonna write whenever and whatever I’m moved to write, and if anyone wants
to read it and maybe have a laugh along with me every now and again, I’m happy to have brightened your day. For now, I’m off to play some Eminem cuz that shit is stuck in my head and
it’s not going away…
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