What's your dream? I have had so many of them over the past few months. Dreams and ambitions roiling in my brain, my mind twirling at a million miles a second with ideas, and goals. So what do I do? I have noticed that one reason for my semi-depressed moody state over the last little while has been my inability to achieve or advance any of these ideas. I felt I have been stagnant in my life, but at the same time that stagnancy has given me time to explore my deepest desires, physically, emotionally, intellectually, all things-ally. I have filled pages and pages of pocket notebooks with the thoughts that have taken over my head.

But this morning as I sat in a rumbling Cartagena Intermedio bus on the way to school, I thought back to April and May of 1998. Two months of my life I spent working as a bartender at Club Med Turkoise in the Turks and Caicos Island. I got bored there too. Why is it I get so bored with paradise-like places. What is my idea of paradise? Do I have one? Maybe it's not so much physical, but more emotional, or even an intellectual paradise. A fantastical, magical library that belongs entirely to me.

Still, the fact remains that I have two weeks left here in Cartagena, in a city where it is unbearably hot, where palm trees line the boulevards, and sand piles up in the corners of the avenues. It collects there as the wind brings it in from the beach. And I'm complaining?

... come on, Ryan ... ... shape up before you ship out ... live the moment ... enjoy this moment which started four months ago ... and savour it ... you might never get another chance like it again ...    Of course, that's entirely up to you, right?

- my inner voice -
May 13th, 2003