Wednesday, July 31, 2013
The Great Plains Lament
I was looking through some pictures today, and found a few pictures I took of a dust storm rolling into my town a few weeks back. I know the weather in the great plains can be really bad sometimes, bouncing between melting hot, freezing cold, hurricane winds, hail, and dust. But other times, It just looks really cool. I
defiantly won't miss the hail, or the 100+ heat, but I will miss the
clouds.
Tuesday, July 30, 2013
First Goodbyes
I left my home Sunday afternoon, seeing many of my friends in person for the last time in a while. I will be spending a week or two traveling around the state to see some friends and family before I officially start my trip.
There have been a lot of sad moments so far, and I can only expect there are some more to come. While I knew that these moments were in my future, for so long they were just that, in my future. Now that they are here at my doorstep, the hits are somewhat harder. I even spent some time trying to move these expectations from my far mode thinking into my near mode thinking, with little success.
These events have shown me how little I can expect my future to match my expectations. I can see now that it will be in my best interest to devote a lot of time to moving my decision making pattern to be more reactive to the events of my trip. Although I have tried to do this in the past, it looks like I didn't do it good enough.
For example, while driving to my parents place, we stopped at a big truck stop/dinner kind of place, and I talked to the waitress about my trip. Her main concern was that I was too pretty, and would be hit on by a LOT of truck drivers. As of now, I had convinced myself that this would never happen, that the amount of gay truck drivers who were forward enough to pick up hitchhikers just to hit on them was to small for me to run into many if not any of them. But I would assume that this waitress has more experience in this area than I do, and I need to deal with the possibility that my trip around the country might be a regular episode of the hills. It is possible that my ability to determine the likelihood of this situation was completely off.
Although I sure hope it isn't
Anyways, if any of my friends are reading this, please know that it totally sucked to say goodbye, and I totally didn't cry.
There have been a lot of sad moments so far, and I can only expect there are some more to come. While I knew that these moments were in my future, for so long they were just that, in my future. Now that they are here at my doorstep, the hits are somewhat harder. I even spent some time trying to move these expectations from my far mode thinking into my near mode thinking, with little success.
These events have shown me how little I can expect my future to match my expectations. I can see now that it will be in my best interest to devote a lot of time to moving my decision making pattern to be more reactive to the events of my trip. Although I have tried to do this in the past, it looks like I didn't do it good enough.
For example, while driving to my parents place, we stopped at a big truck stop/dinner kind of place, and I talked to the waitress about my trip. Her main concern was that I was too pretty, and would be hit on by a LOT of truck drivers. As of now, I had convinced myself that this would never happen, that the amount of gay truck drivers who were forward enough to pick up hitchhikers just to hit on them was to small for me to run into many if not any of them. But I would assume that this waitress has more experience in this area than I do, and I need to deal with the possibility that my trip around the country might be a regular episode of the hills. It is possible that my ability to determine the likelihood of this situation was completely off.
Although I sure hope it isn't
Anyways, if any of my friends are reading this, please know that it totally sucked to say goodbye, and I totally didn't cry.
Sunday, July 21, 2013
The Kid
You might notice that the background of my blog right now is an image from the indie game Bastion (sorry if it is not the background at the time of your reading, you will just have to imagine it). I didn't just choose this picture because I think it looks cool, although it totally does. I picked this picture because I liked this game WAY to much.
If you haven't played the game, skip this post, because the spoilers are a commin. At the end of the game, you are given a choice between two futures. The first choice is to use the power of the Bastion to reset the world to a few weeks ago, thus undoing the calamity that has destroyed everything. The second choice is to use the power to launch the Bastion and use it to sail around the world.
If you ever ask someone who played this game which choice they picked their first time, they will tell you. But then if you ask them WHY they picked that choice they will also tell you, and it won't be arbitrary. Everybody I met who played this game made their decision with thought. If you played this game and choose your ending arbitrarily, please leave a note in the comment box letting me know that I'm full of it.
I can't really think of other games that have that same choice characteristic, anybody who has played moral choice games chooses good because they want the rewards or evil so the can shoot people in the face. There is something about Bastion that made people care about what happened next.
I choose the option to eject. The reason I choose this is because of the "Death Ship" episode of the Twilight Zone. The premise of the episode is that the characters of the ship are stuck in a time loop that will only end if they choose to end it, by acknowledging their own death. This always scared me more than any of the other episodes, something about the endless fate of the characters stuck with me. In Bastion, the narrator of the story can't guarantee that the events that lead to the calamity would not happen again if time was restarted, he only knows that the characters alive now will not remember anything, and therefore not be able to influence the decision. So it looked to me that had I choose to restart the world, it would very likely lead to and endless cycle, so I nipped it in the bud.
"But Woodrow", you ask, "what does this have to do with your travel blog?" Well I will tell you convenient question asker. When I was first deciding to start this trip, I realized that my fear of living a boring small life, and my desire to break away, was parallel to the decision of the game. I was done with college, and short on prospects, so I could either start pluggin away at a job, a career, and do the same thing over and over again for as long as I lived, or I could push in all my chips and launch. I choose to make my life a product of my decisions, to avoid an endless repetition, and to see where the wind takes me. That is why I put the picture on my blog, and that is why I got the city crest from the game tattooed on my chest (something I would never have dreamed of doing a year ago).
Because I'm going sailing
If you haven't played the game, skip this post, because the spoilers are a commin. At the end of the game, you are given a choice between two futures. The first choice is to use the power of the Bastion to reset the world to a few weeks ago, thus undoing the calamity that has destroyed everything. The second choice is to use the power to launch the Bastion and use it to sail around the world.
If you ever ask someone who played this game which choice they picked their first time, they will tell you. But then if you ask them WHY they picked that choice they will also tell you, and it won't be arbitrary. Everybody I met who played this game made their decision with thought. If you played this game and choose your ending arbitrarily, please leave a note in the comment box letting me know that I'm full of it.
I can't really think of other games that have that same choice characteristic, anybody who has played moral choice games chooses good because they want the rewards or evil so the can shoot people in the face. There is something about Bastion that made people care about what happened next.
I choose the option to eject. The reason I choose this is because of the "Death Ship" episode of the Twilight Zone. The premise of the episode is that the characters of the ship are stuck in a time loop that will only end if they choose to end it, by acknowledging their own death. This always scared me more than any of the other episodes, something about the endless fate of the characters stuck with me. In Bastion, the narrator of the story can't guarantee that the events that lead to the calamity would not happen again if time was restarted, he only knows that the characters alive now will not remember anything, and therefore not be able to influence the decision. So it looked to me that had I choose to restart the world, it would very likely lead to and endless cycle, so I nipped it in the bud.
"But Woodrow", you ask, "what does this have to do with your travel blog?" Well I will tell you convenient question asker. When I was first deciding to start this trip, I realized that my fear of living a boring small life, and my desire to break away, was parallel to the decision of the game. I was done with college, and short on prospects, so I could either start pluggin away at a job, a career, and do the same thing over and over again for as long as I lived, or I could push in all my chips and launch. I choose to make my life a product of my decisions, to avoid an endless repetition, and to see where the wind takes me. That is why I put the picture on my blog, and that is why I got the city crest from the game tattooed on my chest (something I would never have dreamed of doing a year ago).
Because I'm going sailing
Sunday, July 14, 2013
Welcome friends.
Welcome friends.
My name is Woodrow Sojourner, I will soon be traveling the world, living out of a backpack. I will be living off of my own ability to obtain work, money, and food, as well as off the kindness of others. This blog will serve 3 purposes:
1. To act as a record of the places I go, things I do, and people I meet.
2. To be a repository of my more fickle musings.
3. To be a hub of communication for people who wish to ask me about my travels, give me advice, or call me a chump.
I will be leaving in 2 weeks from my apartment that has been my home for the last 2 years, I will take a few weeks to visit my friends and family, and I will be leaving out of Dallas Texas in what I expect will be under a month.
Feel free to write this off as inane babbling of an idiot who is going to be, as my co-worker postulated, murdered on the side of the road by truckers, or feel free to stick around and share in the fun.
My name is Woodrow Sojourner, I will soon be traveling the world, living out of a backpack. I will be living off of my own ability to obtain work, money, and food, as well as off the kindness of others. This blog will serve 3 purposes:
1. To act as a record of the places I go, things I do, and people I meet.
2. To be a repository of my more fickle musings.
3. To be a hub of communication for people who wish to ask me about my travels, give me advice, or call me a chump.
I will be leaving in 2 weeks from my apartment that has been my home for the last 2 years, I will take a few weeks to visit my friends and family, and I will be leaving out of Dallas Texas in what I expect will be under a month.
Feel free to write this off as inane babbling of an idiot who is going to be, as my co-worker postulated, murdered on the side of the road by truckers, or feel free to stick around and share in the fun.
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