Wandering Wanaka

I don’t know if you’ve been reading long enough to remember the days when I planned out every single minute of my overseas trips, but trust me when I tell you that I used to plan out every single minute of my trip. During the eight months in Seattle between getting the visa and actually getting on the plane it took everything I had not to just book that first backpackers’ in Auckland, to commit to the radical idea of just getting the lay of the land when I got there, to seeing what the situation on the ground was when I was actually on the ground.

That’s worked out pretty well for me in terms of traveling, now that I’ve been doing it for a while. I still like to plan but I’m now fine with the idea of just planning a couple of days in advance instead of a couple of months. Tomorrow I leave Wanaka for Franz Josepf and the glaciers and then it’s Nelson and Golden Bay for two weeks and I have only the slightest idea of what I’ll do in those places (Franz Josef: look at majestic walls of ice; Nelson: go to beach). That’s pretty much been the way this week in Wanaka has gone, too.

Things have been a bit off with me basically since I left for Picton, I can see that clearly now. It’s my usual but-nothing-is-wrong malaise: nothing’s wrong, everything is fine, but nothing is quite right, either. There was this big air show over Easter weekend, which I didn’t care about but almost everyone else did, so everything was packed and I was staying in a hostel I didn’t much like. I got a weekend ticket to what was advertised as a little music festival with DJs and dancing but turned out to be a guy with a guitar singing bad covers of 90s songs in a bar full of fish-hook-necklace-wearing punters. I can’t get my photos off Flickr and onto this blog so you can see what I’ve been doing for the past couple of weeks, and now I can’t get the other photos off my camera at all. I haven’t been able to connect with anyone, even to be short-term backpacker friends, anywhere I’ve stayed at, and I’m almost out of books to read. Wanaka is beautiful and I’ve liked walking by the lake but something just feels off, and by yesterday I was wondering if I needed to book a bungy jump of some sort because I was just…wandering around by myself every day. Which I like, but it was beginning to get a little lonely and weird.

Right before leaving Wellington I remember being so overwhelmed by all my social stuff, like I was always rushing off from my coffee date to my lunch date to my other coffee date to my dinner date to my post-dinner coffee date, always having about eight emails that needed replies, always texting as I walked down the street, always chatting and hugging and laughing and dealing with more transition, more change. I thought, a couple of times as I put on my going-out top and got on the bus, that I would really look forward to travelling by myself, to no social obligations, to time just to relax. It’s one of the perversities of human nature, I guess, to want what you said you didn’t want, to look ahead or behind instead of all around you to appreciate the here and now, and I wonder if that’s why I’ve been a little off, because I can’t want what I have right now. More than a little off, actually. Most of my backpacking experiences have been super social and fun, where everyone is in love with everyone else and giggling and telling secrets and Facebook friending each other and all of that, and I’m usually right in the middle of it, but since I left my friend Laura in Christchurch I must be giving…something…off, it must show, whatever it is, whatever is slightly wrong with me. People are giving me a wide berth and avoiding whatever is going on with me. I want to avoid it too.

(I think I know what it is, actually. It’s that I want to stay in New Zealand, and I am afraid that I have made the wrong choices to make that happen. I have been thinking, every day, that I am living in the middle of the wrong choices).

Fortunately for me, I’ve been trying to treat myself well even if I’m feeling strange and skewed. I’ve switched to a hostel with comfy beds, a great kitchen, and a pleasingly huge stack of home and garden magazine, and I’ve been spending a decent amount of time outdoors. I went to a little craft fair in the park on Sunday and was looking at necklaces, and when I told the lady at the booth that I was sick and alone for my birthday she gave me the matching earrings for free. I talked to my mom for about an hour yesterday (“You sound off,” she said) and told her I was feeling weird about my birthday and about money and what I’ll do when I get back to Seattle and about not really having any plans and about wanting to come back but not being sure if I can come back, and she told me about when she had just turned thirty-three and how she felt sort of weird then too. I’ve taken myself twice to a very cool movie theater and had cookies and hot chocolate during the intermission and soothed myself with George Clooney’s grindy voice and reassuring ethics. I’ve even started thinking about plans for the next week or so–maybe horse riding at the glaciers and a dive or a seal swim in Nelson before I go on the kayak trip with Alice, because I may be feeling a little low but that’s no reason to act as if I’m being forced to be on holiday for three months. I chose this, so I should really

As soon as I finish this entry I am going to visit the used book shop and then go on my last walk around Lake Wanaka. I’m going to bring a little lunch and my pink waterbottle and my book and my sunscreen and my paper journal and try to get a bit sweaty and find a good place to sit and read and write…and just to accept that this trip hasn’t been everything that I hoped. My mom says to do the best you can with the sense you have, though, so if I have to be a little sad and lonely I am going to do it somewhere beautiful, with yummy food and a good book. If this trip has been a bit disjointed and solitary I am going to try to learn that those things have a place in my life too, that it can’t be a slumber party all the time. I imagine I will be learning that for the rest of my life.