And If You Were Here, You Would Believe, But Would You Suspect, My Emotion Wandering, Yeah

--"If You Were Here", Thompson Twins

Usually in the summer months around, May or June, I'd be planning out my annual trip. As it's an even year this year that would mean setting up plane tickets, hotel reservations, and baseball tickets in Boston as I've taken a trip there in 2005, 2006, and 2008. I was completely intending to make it an bi-annual tradition. In fact, I was going to do something really special this year on account that my good friend Toby is graduating from high school this year. I was going to fly out to Louisville, pick her and her sister up, and we were all going to drive out to Boston to stay for a few days just so I could show them my favorite city in the entire world. Call it a graduation gift, if you will, but to me it would have been a sorely needed grand road trip, something I haven't done in over a decade.

But with my unemployment situation it doesn't look likely that I'll actually be able to get away this year. It's a wicked shame because I was really looking forward to this trip, not only to see dw again, but to be able to show yet another couple of my friends somewhere where I truly feel like myself in.

It's more than that, though. People tend to regard trips as excursions to new and wonderful places. I too have been accused of flaunting my sojourns (especially to ballparks and restaurants around the country) as weapons to rub my local friends' noses in. Every time I come back, I relate stories of what it's like seeing this so-and-so team play or what kind of food the other half of the country eats. In general, I tend to repeatedly bring up the fact that I've been to just so many cities as compared to most of the people I know. This is unintentional, of course. To me it's more about relating what all happened while I was away and the main way I relate to any city is how their people are like. And to me the best two places to see that are in their stadiums and in their restaurants/local hangouts.

Yet what most people don't realize is that most of the time I don't take my trips to go somewhere new; I take most of these trips to get away from something old. That's the reason I don't fly very often with people on trips and why most of the time, if I'm hooking up with friends, it's always with friends in whatever city I'm flying into. Hell, it's probably the main reason why I make friends with people all over the country, just to have an excuse to fly to new cities. Most of the time I can't imagine myself going on with the people I know here, the people I see everyday. I mean--I like them and all, but the purpose of a vacation is to get away from your everyday experience, and that means getting away from the friends and family you see everyday. Brandy put it best when she said that probably the only person I'd actually like to get away with would be my girlfriend or wife... and even that she wasn't sure of.

It's telling that a close friend of mine doesn't believe I'd ask my girlfriend/wife to accompany me. However, it's kind of true. I'm the type of person who has a low threshold for being comfortable in one place too long. Moreover, I get very frustrated having to deal with the same people with day after day. That's why going on holiday really is a kill-two-birds kind of proposition.

Not only do I get away from the same sets of four walls I see everyday.

But I also get away from the same fourteen people I tend to hang out with everyday.

Except this year. This year's going to suck. LOL

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers