My parents are in India on the other side of the planet, doing yoga, Panchakarma cleanses, and having hot oil poured on their heads. My friends and family travel, and yet I have very little desire to do so. I did grow up traveling the world, and I do have many fond memories of airports, layovers, and exotic beaches, Christmases in London, alley restaurants and Buddhist temples in Thailand, cathedrals and museums in Spain, walking the city streets of Rio de Janeiro and a hut in the jungle of Guatemala. But my life does not seem to be calling me to this sort of adventure. I am grateful for these profound experiences and travel changed my life and shaped who I am on so many levels. And yet I am fully satisfied carving out my little nitch on this sparsely populated Island and within the arms of my loving community. Perhaps the quiet and intimacy I feel in my life on Lopez is sweet refuge from so much turmoil in my twenties. I am finding great value in improving my cleaning habits, training myself to read more, getting closer to those I already know, and ultimately really getting settled in my sense of place. It is said that one could spend a lifetime studying the living organisms within a square foot of earth, and I feel this. There is endless unmarked territory in my simple life. Whether it be amongst my habits and belief, my knowledge, my neighbors, or the parks I frequent. I find joy in fine tuning the basic skills of life, I don’t need a career of degree, I find that this limits what I can focus on and discover. I am free to travel without trotting the globe. I travel when I spend time with a friend, in my mind and my emotions. I travel when I read a book, when I pray with friends, when I go to the grocery store, post office and coffee shop. Slowing things down to the extent where there is only one small library, three restaurants, five roads, and two grocery stores to choose from, seems at first to limit life. And yet this is just our framework in which we live our lives. In a way over choosing can be a distraction. I do not believe that cultures should be Americanized, and I value diversity as one of the most potent and fundamental gifts of this planet. I am simply saying that in my old age at 36, I prefer to be bored. I find myself sitting in my living room night after night, not feeling like going to the one bar I frequent, and saying, “I am bored. Well I could make a painting, start a new book, or organize.” And this is a possibility, and yet sometimes I just choose to settle down in my boredom. I relish it and say thank you lord, for giving me nothing to do, a lack of excitement and distraction. Perhaps I will get to know myself better. Perhaps it is in the cell wall structure of my skin where I must buy a ticket. Perhaps I am getting old, but my life still has grit, joy and excitement. Though as my life slows down and seems to get so much smaller, I find I only expand and grow; in truth, love, wisdom, appreciation, and knowledge of myself and others.