Two Stars To The Right And Straight On 'Til Morning

SAN FRANCISCO, CA - First off, apologies. I've felt pretty busy this past week and have fallen behind. No excuses. Just reasons. Onward.

I now officially work at the hostel. There's a contract to sign and everything. Who would have thought? I signed my soul away. And it has finally settled in that I live in a hostel. This is home.

So, I got to thinking. What kind of person does this? What kind of person lives at a hostel? In fact, what kind of person travels around and stays at hostels?

Sure, there are some people who are just trying to find a cheap place to stay while they travel. But these people are pretty easy to spot quickly. They stay for maybe one night and spend much of their time to themselves. They hang out in bed, read a book, stay out of the hostel much of the time... the same things they'd be doing if they were to get a hotel room and sleep alone each night. They're just looking for a cheap place to lay down their head.

Real hostelers have a different feel to them. People who interact, spend time in the common room, really dig in to conversations. People hungry for life. But like anyone hungry for something, I guess there must be something missing. They don't feel full with a job, or family, or hobby. Like a craving that must be satisfied, they're searching.

Lost souls. Well, I suppose not everyone. Maybe it's more of a U.S. thing. I've met plenty of wanderers from all around the world. Many of them on holiday. They have a real job and they take a few months off. There still seems to be a hunger. They could be at home, relaxing, getting tasks done. But they're not. They're hopping cities around the world, spending their time with lost souls, many of us much younger than them.

What of us from this country? There seems to be much more of a sense of feeling lost. Is it our culture? Or our individual upbringings?

We're like the Lost Boys. Or maybe just me. Like we're in limbo. In some place removed from everything at the moment. At the moment, I feel like I have plenty of opportunities to grow as a person everyday, but I don't ever have to if I don't want to. Everything in my life feels like it's temporarily on hold. I suppose the days are passing and I'm certainly getting older, but it doesn't seem that way. I used to worry about days slipping past me, like I was watching landscape unfold out a car window without every really experiencing it. Now it seems as though everything is done on my time, at the pace I want it done.

Currently I do things when I want to do them and because I want to do them. It feels good. I'm doing good things and doing them precisely because I want to. But I don't have to.

The other day I realized that my life fits in a couple bags at this point. I live out of two bags I keep stored in a locker under my bed. At 2am on any given night, I could pack up these few things, wander to my car, and disappear. I have no plans to do this, whatsoever, but I've never been in this position before. Any other time, I would need a U-Haul and several days to get things taken care of. Things are very compact at this point. I feel a mixture of relief and disbelief when thinking of this.

Hell, I even asked my mom today not to really send anything much for Christmas because I don't really have space for it in this compact life. Sometimes it can complicate things, but most times things are just easier.

So, are we Lost Boys refusing to grow up, or are we individuals who don't quite fit into the normal scheme of things, trying to find a place to carve out and call our own? I don't know. I'm working on that one. Last night I talked about how I felt like I was standing at the edge of a cliff and it is now time for me to decide whether to dive in or step back from the edge and walk away.

I suppose it's about time to figure that out.