Derive

There is a French word that describes spontaneous and unplanned journeys.

As I write, it is 00.36 on a Monday night, all my roomies are asleep, and in the background, I listen to a song from Xavier Rudd.  Tomorrow I am heading off to another adventure, and I only have had a few trips in my life that were as unprepared as this one is today.

At the weekend, we threw a house party at our dorm, and I reconnected with a friend of mine, and he asked me casually if I want to join him for a 4-day road trip by canoe around the Seenplatte in Mecklenburg Vorpommern (German is really the most beautiful language in the world haha).  It is basically a unique lake archipelago in north Germany, and some of Europe's finest natural reserve parks are to be found there.

In my last blog post, I reviewed the book Vagabonding, by Rolf Potts, and one of his core missions is to eliminate the mental fallacy that travelling is only reserved for the rich.

At the moment, my university is eating up all of my money, and the only thing that stops me from regarding myself as broke is that I stopped checking my bank account. x)

However, I thought that this might be a perfect opportunity for another experiment.

Is it possible to travel so cheaply that you actually save a bit of money?

Right now, I spend about 15 dollars a day on food (jab those gains cost me a lot actually), and I need to buy tickets for public transportation, which is about 5 bucks also.

So, over the next 4 days, I plan to make a badass road trip, and actually save some money while doing so!  Renting a canoe costs 5 euros a day, we sleep in a tent in the woods, so that is no money, and we have to pay for gas for the car.  All in all, for 4 days, it will be roughly around 20 for canoe and 25 for the car so 45 total.  For food, I am going all minimalist on you guys over the next 4 days; kidney beans, sardines, and rice is on the menu.  Jab this is going to suck a bit, but hey, do you want to eat a pizza or do you want to travel.

The point I am trying to make guys is that working more is not always the answer, spending less can be just as efficient.

So my plea for you today is: revaluate your excuses.

What is it really that is stopping you from getting or doing the things you want.  People think they do not work out because they have no time, but they watch 2 hours of Netflix in the evening; others think they cannot afford travel because they do not have enough money, while in reality, it is that they are bad at finding where they can spend less money on bullshit they do not really need.

Travelling does not start when you book a flight, it starts with a conscious decision in your everyday life.  Evaluate your financial habits, where can you save some money?  Do you have some stuff that you do not need anymore?  Fcking sell it.  You got an extra room that you do not use?  Air BnB it.  Do you spend too much money on restaurants?  Go vegan for a month and only eat healthy greens.  You love going out with your friends?  Have a party at your house, so you do not have to play club entry.  I think you catch my drift guys.

Being a vagabond is not only about travelling, but it is also about mindset and habits.  The psychology of a traveller is different than from somebody who does not know what they want in life.  And, from personal experience, I never regretted a shitty job that I had that enabled me to fly around the world, and I never thought back on an unspectacular meal that I had and regretted it.  We are in the business of collecting moments, not things, guys.

So fellow crazy people, thx for reading, and write in the comments what sacrifices you make to travel.

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The Price Of Being A Vagabond— Mecklenburgische Seenplatte {Travel Journal Day 2}

The first day of my trip comes to an end.  While writing these words, I am under the free sky, writing in my travel journal.  I hear crickets and light laughter in the background.  The only source of light comes from a candle that we put in an empty beer bottle, Charles Bukowski style.

I am in the middle of nowhere with people who a day ago almost strangers to me, we talk into the night about our feelings and our dreams, but also about our insecurities and what we are afraid of.

When my friend, who looks like a real-life version of Broly from the surfer’s movie Point Break, asked me to join him and his friends on the canoe trip I, at first, had some doubts if we would get along.

But lately, I try to be more spontaneous and decide stuff more by my “Hell yeah”  or “F*ck No” philosophy.

Only a day has passed, and this group already has come together and spoken openly about topics that are important to us.

My friend and I exchanged crazy travel stories, stories where we had to bribe the police or had psychological breakthroughs while vagabonding.

Two stories stood out for me, one was my buddy telling a tale where he travelled through Chile in his hippie bus with a big ass hallucinogenic cactus in the trunk, and he almost got caught by the police.

Another one was, where I was so sh*tfaced that an angry mob of machete-wielding yakuza's wanted to get my a*s on an island in Thailand.

Travellers luck, I guess.  Funny how crises and total disasters become funny later.

Today was our first-day canoeing, and I am blown away by the nature of the Mecklenburgerische Seenplatte.

The combination of doing the same paddle movement for hours and letting your eyes discover an entirely new world feels like meditation.  It is unreal how fast you forget here about your own life, about your daily hassle, your must-dos, your obligations.

You unplug instantly out of your everyday trance.  It was fascinating to me that I was only a couple of hours of road-tripping away from diving into a totally different world.

Being in the presence of such nature really makes you question your aspirations, your drives, your addiction to external validation because here, everything works just fine without you.  You feel small, but in a good way.  Like, it is ok, life will go on without you, and your problems are not the end of the world, so why stress so much.

After some hours of canoeing through the fairy-tale landscape, I feel like my arms will soon fall off, so we aim for an island where we can snack and take a swim in the lake.  Swimming in a cold lake is really like somebody infusing you with a big portion of happiness and life.

As I swim there freely, my friend yells ”look a whale” and dives into the water in such a manner that his butt stands still in the air for a second, and we get an incredibly deep insight into his rectal anatomy.  There goes the romance, I guess.

After some swimming, we sit down at the shoreline and snack on something from the forest.

Being a psychology nerd, I tend to ask weird questions all the time, and we end up talking about what relationship constructs we like and dislike.

Some of the group were all about monogamy, while others preferred something more poly.  This was really fascinating to me, love is a big part of life, and having a custom made relationship model is somewhat of a necessity, in my opinion.

The Price Of Being A Vagabond

I realise how many things I still have not figured out in my life right now, how unsure I am whether or not my path is the right one, and what the life of a vagabond will really cost me.

Some time ago, I decided that for the current phase of my life, it is not possible to have a traditional mono relationship.  I felt that, somehow, life is going to take me on an adventure, and this adventure is for me, and for me only.  In consequence, I broke up with someone who was very special to me.  Being in nature really opens you up, and I realise that I am still grieving about that loss and that I have no clue how to deal with this.

I came to the conclusion that everything has its cost.

A decision for something is, at the same time, a decision against something else, and some time ago, when I realised that I am not the typical 9-5 person, I did not think that that realisation would also come with a price.  It seems that my decision to become a vagabond is not only shaping my external life but also my inner one as well.

Being a nomad means, to a certain point, that your curiosity outweighs your settledness.  You move on from good things, from great things even, because you want to experience life as a whole.

And, I realised that this philosophy will also bring me restlessness, pain, discomfort, and even loneliness.  As I talk in the forest with my new found friends about what we miss in love, I am eased by the fact that I am not alone in this human thing, and that to a degree we are all sometimes have no f*cking clue what we are doing, and that it is ok to feel lost sometimes.  Crazy how everybody is living a life that is as complex as your own.

I know one thing, however, that I have an entire planet and countless adventures ahead of me, and that maybe if I search long enough, I will eventually run out of things to mess up, and that at the end of my journey I will come up with a custom-made life, in which I find peace, maybe even partner in crime who has the same values as me.

So fellow weirdos, my message for you today is that you need to stop pretending like everything in your life is cool.  Come to peace with the realisation that life is not all great, and there are things that just plain suck.

It is impossible to avoid pain and discomfort all the time, go deep and ask yourself what is bothering you right now.

Feeling pain and grief sometimes is not abnormal; it is an indicator that you are a beautiful person who is capable of loving people and caring about stuff, and feeling sh*tty.  When it does not work out for a bit, it is not a sign of weakness; it is a sign of you being human.

Stop Bullsh*ting Yourself

On the contrary, on my podcast with Tash from Port Joana, we shortly talked about grief, and how it is more abnormal if you feel super happy when something happens to you that hurts you.

Incongruent emotional reactions, like pretending you are not hurt when a relationship was not working out, or you did not get that dream job, is not a sign of strength, it is a sign that you are too hurt feel those emotions.  Not giving in quickly to those emotions will only put you playing whack a mole with yourself.  If you do not deal with those emotions, they will pop up somewhere else.

Those emotions if not lived out, will not go anywhere.  Maybe you will overcompensate at work, you dive into a new relationship with a person you really should not be with, or for some it is drugs, and for others it is depression.

Be 100% real with yourself guys; otherwise, you are bull shi*ting yourself.

It is now time for me to sleep, the candle is about to die, and tomorrow I have got a new adventure ahead of me.

As always guys, thx for reading and go live a kick-a*s life.

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Reconnecting With Nature — Mecklenburgische Seenplatte {Travel Journal Day 3}

Solitude

As I write these words, I am alone on my canoe, watching the burning sun vanish slowly behind the pine trees.  In my hand, I have my pen and my blog, I am writing.  On the surface of the water, I see the reflection of the gloaming sunset, it looks like there are two horizons, and I feel like I am flying.

Although I had an amazing day with my friends canoeing through the nature parks, I needed some time for myself.  I wanted to recharge and manifest the profound experiences that I made today.  Although I seem very extroverted, at heart, I am a loner, and being around people too much, to a degree also exhausts me.

Today, I learned many things, one of them is that apparently, mosquitos are really into me, good thing malaria is not a thing in Europe.  Sleeping on the floor is a different experience from sleeping in a made bed.  My core intention of this trip was to liberate myself from materialism for a few days and to practice poverty.

My thinking was to internalise that the worst condition, which for many is to have no money and no house, is actually not that bad.  I am a person who is sometimes very driven but also very anxious.  For me, understanding that the very condition that I feared so much is actually not that bad, liberated me to a degree from the process of inner turmoil and fear that was buzzing inside my head for far too long.

The reason that I started to write was that I wanted to portray my weird journey around the world of trying to get my stuff together.  I was just tired of messing up, and I wanted to start my own pursuit of investigating unhappiness.  I wanted to share my findings with the world in order to add some value this way.  Hence on this blog, I will write about habits, tools, books, and real-world case studies and adventures that have helped me to battle depression.

So, while other travel bloggers might focus on the best spots to party, I want to gather natural antidepressants.  I want to engineer myself away from lethargic and depressed, and towards happiness, contribution, and adventure.  I feel that if a weirdo with my background manages to overcome his demons and make his dream come true of becoming a digital nomad, that this will show others that transformation is possible, necessary even.

Sleeping hungover in a tent, however, as stoically romantic as it sounds also has its price.  Waking up, I feel a bit like the guy from Full Metal Jacket who was beaten by the other soldiers with socks full of soap.

My inner demons particularly love mornings, and voices of self-doubt and fear are the loudest when my body is the weakest.  For some time, I was looking for morning habits, in particular, those that help me to keep those voices in check, or at least turn the volume down a bit.

So, I was walking around the camp, looking like a zombie from the walking dead, lethargic and moody.

Freedom

My friend spots this and insists, that instead of showering, I need to swim in the cold lake first thing in the morning, naked, free willy style.

I have no choice he tells me.

As my friend pulls down his shorts, he walks/dangles into the lake majestically.  I told you guys in the last article that my buddy looks like Patrick Swayze from Point Break, and I do not know why but everything he does looks kind of cool.  I am the opposite.  If there were a goof scale, I would be at the end of it.

So, I pull down my pants also and run, giggling like a little girl (a 2m and 105 kilos little girl), into the cold water.

What follows is a profound experience of freedom.  My body and mind are refreshed, renewed even.  I am unable to think; I am just there.

I decide to backstroke slowly, and as I dip my head into the water, I unplug.  As I dip my ears in the water and glide slowly backwards, the only thing that I hear is the lake, my own breath, and my heartbeat.  It feels like I am floating in space.

I am fascinated by this simple but deep experience.  Diving into a world far away from my normal daily trance of paying bills, worrying, and stressing out about if other people like me or not.

As I float in this lake, my eyes wander around all of the surrounding pine forests.  I feel at home.  I cannot help but think about the many people who are plagued by pain and depression that could be healed here.  What if the epidemic of global unhappiness is founded by our lost connection to nature.

What if the missing puzzle piece for treating depression and suffering lies in nature.  Modern psychological medicine is always looking for new ways to treat people.  But what if the direction is wrong, what if we need to look backwards.

As I swim in the cold lake, I dive into the green water; I stop breathing.  My emotions stop.  I am just surviving.  There is no conditioned mindset in my brain anymore today; I am free.

Go All The Way — Mecklenburgische Seenplatte {Travel Journal Day 4}

I sit on the ground.  My bare feet touch the grass.  Shoes are overrated.  I hear goats in the background.  Two of them are having sex.  A couple of butterflies and blue dragonflies circle around me.  There are no clouds in the sky and no protection from the blasting sun.  I do not talk.  I write.

Only hours before writing these words, I witnessed the most powerful thunderstorm of my life.  I am still permeated by feelings of both fear and fascination.  I am overwhelmed by the character of what I experienced last night.  The scent of the storm still lingers in the air.

After an exhausting day, we decided that we wanted to sleep under the stars.  We pulled out our sleeping bags, blew out the candle, and moved as close together as possible.  I do not have a pillow, so I take my backpack.  I feel sardine cases on my head.  It is not comfortable.  I do not care, though.

We cuddle.  Shooting stars appear.  We talk about our dreams.  There are more shooting stars, then we have desires.  I think this a good thing.

At this moment, ego, status, or money is of no importance.  My newfound friends fall asleep.  There is nobody to impress here.  No need to pretend.  I let my guard down.

It is a whimsical night.  My thoughts drift.  I watch the trees in the background.  They gloom weirdly in the moonlight.  They do not care.  They do not judge me.

I cannot help but think about why I wanted to start to vagabond in the first place.  Maybe I wanted to escape.  Maybe I wanted to become more special.  I am unsure at this point.  I know, however, that I am no longer waiting live.  My journey has started.

I know that years from now, I will still remember this moment of my life.
I will say that once I was young.  That once I was impossibly young.  That I slept under the free sky.  That I loved.  That I lost.  That I lived.

Go All The Way

A conversation I had some time ago pops up.  I talked to a young poet, we talked about humans constant craving for external validation.  A drive to be special.  A drive to be more.  Nobody leaves this earth unscarred I feel.

Sometimes, we are hurt so gravely that we internalise, that we must take extreme measures to make sure that we are never left or hurt again.  This does not work.  It is unavoidable that life is going kick you in the nuts.  Investigating our why is of utmost importance.  Are you taking that new job because it aligns with your mission in life, or do you take that job because it is a safe choice and it aligns with what other people think you should do with your time on earth?  Fck those other people.

Often, we do things because we are worried about the opinion of others.  I believe the psychological process behind it is that we subconsciously think that if we do what everybody wants us to do, we will be loved.  We will not be left or hurt again.  We are all unsatisfied children.  We want daddy or mommy to come to say ”you are a good kid”.

Realising that stuff is going to happen anyway, frees you to a degree from pleasing others at your cost.  Nothing is worse than a life unlived.  Regret is the enemy.

My thoughts are interrupted by a weird flash of light in the sky.  A storm is coming.  In the roaring night, I make a promise to myself.  I will live this life to the extreme.

My friend wakes up with the scent of the distant rain.  We get up.  We do not wake the girls yet.  We sit down and face the other side of the clear horizon.  We discover the full magnitude of the storm.  We do not take precautions just yet.  The gloomy darkness is interrupted by the rumble of distant thunder.  Thunderbolts appear.  Our eyes are not yet adapted to the light, and each thunderbolt blinds us.

We do not talk.  We move our tent away, so we are not waked with next by a pine tree hitting our tent.

I am stunned and dazzled by the eventfulness of this trip.  It started as an experiment to prove to myself that even without money, travelling is possible.  That the condition I feared, can actually be pretty awesome.  What has started as an experiment had become an adventure and an inner journey.

While sitting in the face of the violent spectacle, I think about my dream.  What my decision of becoming a wandering psychologist and digital nomad will cost.  What it already has cost me.  From losing the people I loved.  To being mocked.  To feeling hunger.  To freezing at train stations, and I declared to myself, that I was willing to pay whatever.  I had no choice at this point anymore.  I have to do this.

If you are reading this, and you have a dream, do not just contemplate chasing it.  Do it.  Go all the way.  What you are experiencing right now is only a glimpse of what is waiting for you.

Since my journey has just started, I end today’s article by borrowing the words of someone who has finished his journey: Charles Bukowski.  As always, thanks for reading, and go kick a*s in life.

Charles Bukowski

Roll the dice

If you’re going to try, go all the way.  otherwise, do not even start.  if you’re going to try, go all the way.  this could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives, jobs and maybe your mind.  go all the way.

It could mean not eating for 3 or 4 days.  it could mean freezing on a park bench.  it could mean jail,  it could mean derision, mockery, isolation.  isolation is the gift, all the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it.  and you’ll do it despite rejection and the worst odds and it will be better than anything else
you can imagine.

If you’re going to try, go all the way.  there is no other feeling like that.  you will be alone with the gods and the nights will flame with fire.

Do it, do it, do it.  do it.

All the way all the way.

You will ride life straight to perfect laughter, it’s the only good fight there is.

– Charles Bukowski

Alone With Everybody — Mecklenburgische Seenplatte {Travel Journal Day 5/5}

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The car is moving at 50 miles per hour.  The window is open.  My hand glides through the air.  There are rings on my fingers.  My friend has an old iPod that accompanied him all over the world.  It is his gem.  We listen to Noah and the Whale.

It is 36 degrees outside.  The car is overheating.  We do not want to blow the engine, so we drive slowly, much to the disgust of everybody else on the highway.  We do not care.

We are driving towards home.  There is no rush, it is not going anywhere.  My friend is reluctant to go back.  He just became an engineer, and he needs to start working soon.  He is not happy about that.

We talk about what travelling means for us.  He tells me tales about tramping through South America.  We come to a mutual consensus that planning is overrated.  Adventure is found in the unknown.

He tells me a story.  He started travelling in Chile after finishing his university there.  He decided that he wanted to go to a city in southern Chile.  He was picked up by a stunning woman headed in the same direction.  Instead of going to his original targeted city, he went with Valentina.  That was her name.  To this day, the most intense romantic and painful experience of his life.

Journeys where we are guided by randomness, really make the best stories.  We are in a weird emotional state of nostalgia—longing for something that is both behind and in front of us.

The topic shifts to regret.  How stupid decisions sometimes show us most what we really want.  What we do not want.

Mistakes, for me, often equal profound personal discoveries.  I learn through failure.  And, oh boy, do I fail a lot.

I think I have had a crisis on every continent so far.  Bribing the police in Africa.  Being chased by yakuza in Thailand.  Driving straight into Australia’s biggest hurricane ever.  Overdosing in Columbia.  Losing all my credit cards in Cambodia.  I could go on for hours.

Every time I thought I messed up to the point of no return, life continued anyway.  I believe that real understanding comes through failure.  Something that I never shied away from, and to this point, it has been everything but boring.

Last night was our last night.  Because of the thunderstorm, there were no clouds all day.  The chances of experiencing another starry night were high.  What I did not expect was a profound spiritual experience.

After another day of canoeing, we exhaustingly arrived at our final camping spot—a hill in a forest where we could oversee the calm lake.  The floor is covered with acorns.  Since I have no sleeping pad, I know I am in for a rough night.

I need to write.  So I get away.  I walk away from my friends.  I get the canoe and paddle to the middle of the lake.  Alone.  I can let my guard down.

Nobody is here.  I stop paddling.  The lake becomes a mirror.  I start writing.

I think about my journey.  I feel the emotions of strange wistfulness about upcoming events.

The people I travel with were a couple of strangers just a few days ago.  In this short time, we created a temporary place of warmth, friendship, and contentment.

It is too quiet.  I hear only my heartbeat.  It is too loud.  I do not like it.  It sounds like a clock.  I am weirded out by my own urge to get away.  I wonder why I feel most alone when I am with everybody.  I seem to have an inexplicable urge to push people away.  Close friends, people I love even.  My anxieties bore me.

I wonder how many people right now are having the same thoughts.  Seeing the same thing.  Living the same life.

Wishes

The sun turns golden.  I want to head back.  I am hungry.  I paddle back to the shore.  We eat on top of the small hill.  We are entertained by the sunset, passing over the calm lake., slowly vanishing behind the acorn forest.  We eat pasta.  For the 4th day in a row.  It is starting to get dark.  We light a candle, and my friends drink beer.  We laugh and make memories.

We decide to sleep at the lake today, counting stars and talking about life.  We move our sleeping bags to the footbridge next to our canoes.  We cuddle and wait till it gets pitch black.

As the sun goes down, the moon comes up.  I am a city kid.  I always loved watching the stars.  In the city, however, you barely see any.

As we lay there together on the wood of the footbridge, stars appear everywhere.  Our head is just at the edge of the wood of the lake.  We can see the entire Milky Way.  The thunderstorm of last night took all the clouds with him it seems.  We see satellites passing over our heads.  Mars is blazing with a red flash above our heads.

Showers of shooting stars journey through the sky.  We make countless wishes.  They will all come true.  One of the girls says that this trip changed her.  I agree.  They asked me what I wish for; I told them more muscles.  They think I am joking.  I am not.  We talk about where we would want to be in a year from now.  I say maybe, Harvard.  Instantly, I regret using the word maybe.

My friend says that in one year he wants to be happy.  I think that happiness is overrated.  He gets up and pees in the lake.  We laugh.  The moonlight shines on his chalky behind.  Mosquitos are having a feast.  We fall asleep anyway.

I am in doubt whether or not my journey of becoming a wandering psychologist will be successful.  I know, however, that I will do it anyway.  I have no plan B.  Plan B’s are for wimps.  I am not a wimp.  Only sometimes.

As my eyes close, I think about a question.  If I could make my dream come true right now, would I do it?  Would you do it?

I want to finish today’s post by borrowing the words of Allan Watts.  As always, thank you for reading and following me on my weird journey.

Let’s suppose that you were able every night to dream any dream you wanted to dream and that you could, for example, have the power within one night to dream 75 years of time, or any length of time you wanted to have.

And you would, naturally, as you began on this adventure of dreams, you would fulfil all your wishes.  You would have every kind of pleasure you could conceive.  And after several nights of 75 years of total pleasure each, you would say “Well that was pretty great”. But now let’s have a surprise, let’s have a dream which isn’t under control, where something is gonna happen to me that I don’t know what it’s gonna be.

And you would dig that and would come out of that, and you would say “Wow that was a close shave, wasn’t it?”.  Then you would get more and more adventurous, and you would make further- and further-out gambles what you would dream.  And finally, you would dream where you are now.  You would dream the dream of living the life that you are actually living today.  Alan Watts

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