wherever you go, there you are

and that's the problem.

that's why i can never take a vacation, never take a break, never enjoy any "time off".

there is no "time off", probably not even with sedation.

wherever I go, there I am.

i need a break from myself, not from the place where i live or the people i work with. that is why all vacation spots are euqally unpalatable.

that's why i always go to the same two places, to the complete befuddlement of my coworkers.

i've got three weeks mandatory consecutive vacation that's about to expire in a couple of months because in five years i couldn't manage to think up a vacation plan for those three weeks. i'm supposed to have a bright idea of when to take it and what to do with it by this monday.

wherever i go, there i am.

when i think of vacation, i think of sleep in a sensory deprivation chamber. no email, no internet, to phone, no memory, no dreams, no past, no future, not even a present. rest.

i enjoy my day-to-day grind, as much as i allow me to enjoy anything. i alternate between having a routine and breaking it, but i always seem to settle into a new routine.

i dread the idea of a 12 hour plane flight.

i dread the idea of complete personal and cultural isolation. i've been there, done that, and i finally pulled myself out of it. i don't want to go back.

everyone tells me i should spend a month in europe, or india, or hong kong, or viet-nam, of all places.

wherever i go, there i am.

it will be the same old story, only the numbers will change: poor, hungry, miserable, uneducated people; dazzingly wealthy, privileged, fattened, miserable, uneducated people; and me somewhere in between. still having the same old thoughts, the same old feelings, the same old reactions. still imagining what it would be like to spend the rest of my life in this new place, and still coming to the conclusion that I'd be just as uneasy and maladjusted here as anywhere else. still coming to the conclustion that wherever i go, there i am.

i'm easy to please, and hard to please.

i will enjoy a good sunset or a nice tree. if i want, i can crank up my enjoyment-amplification circuits and experience orgasmic or spiritual levels of bliss. i can't imagine that i'd need to go overseas or out of the county or out of my chair to have a new experience. to enjoy... things. people. life.

but maybe i just lack imagination. do you believe that?

"see how other people live," they say. ugh. why would i want to? other people live better than me, which is depressing, or far worse than me, which is depressing. "go see some poor people to appreciate what you have," say my luxury-car-driving jet-setting pocket-pc-holstered (just like me!) paly-wals. trust me, enis, i appreciate what i have. more than you can possibly imagine. do you think i need to see starving babies or suicide-bombed israeli bus patrons or bulldozed palestinian protesters to know that the world we live in is a horrible, horrible place once you pull back the curtain a little?

i know it. possibly more than those who grew up in it but pulled the curtain up tight once they arrived in the land of the free from responsibility. i know it and i appreciate it. i pulled back the curtain and then put put it back where it belonged. i put my head back in the sand. a coward's retreat? perhaps. cowardice begets worm-food just as surely as heroism. my happiness is a conscious choice, a choice that is surely subconscious for the vast majority of those who have such a choice. we are all born with our heads in the sand, and if our lives afford us the opportunity to see the world -- up close or from a distance, it's all the same -- our lives will teach us as well whether we can be happy out of the sand or whether we must return to self-delusion to find peace.

so what's the point? i'm approaching 30 and i've done nothing in this life yet i feel like i've seen it all. i whine and complain and do more about it than you'll ever know, dear reader. it is a fight that i will not ever win, yet cannot surrender.

again, what's the point? to evoke some new set of emotions in myself, i suppose, and to gain new memories. to have experiences. i should go have those experiences and consume those memories "somewhere else" -- otherwise it's not a vacation, yes? i mean, if i experience awe and smallness and appreciation of beauty and a bit of chill contemplating the glaciers of alaska or the mountains of antarctica or the view from everest, that awe and smallness and beauty and chill is somehow different than the awe and smallness and beauty and chill that i can get three and a half hours from here at one of my two vacation spots, right? right? the magnitude is different, eh? maybe an extra emotion thrown into the mix for that added "oomph". no doubt.

ah, but the memories. those would be different. the memory of a sunset over some famous river or another in france or standing in line at customs in argentina, those would be unique and special, unlike any other memories i currently have. right? right?

who needs new memories? i've got enough to think about already without remembering more places that i'd rather be, more things that i touched but had to let go. i'd rather work on creating an appealing present-tense than a misty nostalgia to pine for in decades to come.

... and yet, for all my self-convincing that one place is just as dull as the next and that i'll be just as disappointed by one self-planned vacation as the next, i'm also plagued by the feeling that this is a once-in-a-lifetime chance that i'm about to flush down the crapper.

so what do i do? hold my nose and shell out a couple large for a trip to cavort across europe drinking espresso and beer and fattening up on sausage and croissants? live it up amongst the child molesters in thailand? take a tour of the states? stay home and watch jenny jones for three weeks?

i know what i need and i know why i can't get it. i know what i have to do and i know why i won't do it. i know me. and wherever i go, there i am.