New habits, long journeys

I'm trying to break some bad habits, and teach myself some new ones, to help strip away some of the clutter in my life, especially regarding the retention of paper. I've been a compulsive but disorganized keeper of documents, typically out of a belief (or anxiety) that they might have value someday. It's gotten to the point that all the piles of crap really cramp my style at home and at work.

I spent most of the day yesterday purging boxes of documents from high school and earlier, fascinating time capsules of what I measured as "important" back then. Certainly there were some great momentos and photos that I'll hang on to, but there was also a frightening quantity of high school homework, periodicals, and miscellaneously scraps of paper that I did not have the wisdom to see would not only be unimportant, they would be indecipherable.

It's a bit embarrassing, thinking of myself hauling this stuff around all these years. (Sorry to those of you who've exerted your backs against the psychic and physical weight of these calcified memories.) Thankfully, there are some gems amid the muck. Here's me in fourth grade, circa 1982. Wicked shirt, eh?



Truthfully, the pile-up is attributable to my tendency to put any other household chore ahead of thinning the herd. I'm happy to say that I feel like I've finally found my motivation: it has finally become exciting to me, rather than a chore, to cut free of all this accumulated weight. Wish me luck!

Speaking of cutting loose, I've been reading about Ted Simon's decision to leave his cushy job, home and relationships and spend the next four years traveling the world on the back of a Triumph T-100.



As recounted in Jupiter's Travels, he left just ahead of the '70s oil crisis, and was quite unprepared for what he experienced. His sensitive, vulnerable and sometimes grandiose reflections about his initial anxieties and growing sense of peace while traveling are both inspiring and thought provoking. He describes how his fears about what might be were far more often the source of his troubles than anything that the world actually threw at him. He was 46 then, and now he's at it again at age 70.

My sweetie has a real knack for gift-giving, and thanks to it, in December she and I watched Long Way Down, the documentary of Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman's journey from the northern tip of Scotland to the southern tip of South Africa on a couple of BMW 1200 GS Adventures. Long Way Round, their previous trip from London east to New York, was inspired by Mr. Simon's adventures, and they actually met up with him in Mongolia.

I've also been following Serdar Sunny Unal's motorcycle journey from Los Angeles to Buenos Aires aboard a Kawasaki KLR650, which began in December. Serdar makes his living as a photographer, and has already captured some breath-taking images on his journey. Check them out!