Life is a sum of all your choices”. So, what are you doing today?
I’ve often posted about travel; the opportunities, the freedom, the possibility of reinvention and how I’ve felt many of the people I’ve met seem to be searching for a place to fit in this world. Gradually my sense of self seems to be evolving over the past three years and I’ve begun to identify as queer rather than gay. People who know me understand that I feel that it’s more inclusive … that the gay community is somehow limiting as I’m not purely defined by my sexuality and given my life experience I do not have the same history. I’m discovering there’s a wider community out there somewhere… one that not only includes all LGBTQ+ people but those in the “straight” world who are queer on a much wider spectrum than mere sexual orientation.
They are the people who refuse to conform to the social norms which control us; those with contrary views about politics, art, creativity, music, family, ways of being and living. I’ve often found them as I travel; the searchers, activists, misfits, adventurers, those who are willing to take a chance in life and fully engage with the new and alternative; really try out new things and have the confidence to fail. These thoughts have been percolating for a while now. At my age I am discovering what I need in life. I wish I had lead my life in this way and started to do so earlier. I’ve always been too timid. I may only have a few years left for this exploration so now is the real time for being open to the unknown, exciting and frightening. So my next trip may turn out to be something different. I may be disappointed but I hope not. Let’s see.
“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion”.
“Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal”.
Camus beginning to be a light for me
This is a guide
What gives value to travel is fear. It is the fact that, at a certain moment, when we are so far from our own country…we are seized by a vague fear, and an instinctive desire to go back to the protection of old habits. This is the most obvious benefit of travel. At that moment we are feverish but also porous, so that the slightest touch makes us quiver to the depths of our being. We come across a cascade of light, and there is eternity. This is why we should not say that we travel for pleasure. There is no pleasure in traveling, and I look upon it more as an occasion for spiritual testing. If we understand by culture the exercise of our most intimate sense — that of eternity — then we travel for culture. Pleasure takes us away from ourselves in the same way as distraction, in Pascal’s use of the word, takes us away from God. Travel, which is like a greater and graver science, brings us back to ourselves.
Camus … Cahiers
Why has it taken me so long to discover this
Escape to myself 
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