The New Blog

Every day is a new day in the life of me. Upon waking up, it does not matter what I have done the previous day or days. I could have saved the world yesterday from a massive attack from aliens and it would not matter today. I am always concerned with what I am going to do today. Or rather in my head it typically goes something like: "What am I not doing right now that I should be doing?".

Life since I have returned home has been filled with a great deal of mental difficulty. On almost every morning since my return home I wake up and immediately I am filled with feelings of mass anxiety and fear. For the longest time I could not really tell why I was waking up and being overwhelmed with these feelings. My normal reaction to this has been to want to sleep longer in the hopes that I will then wake up feeling refreshed and ready to take on the new day. This, however, has not happened once yet. Typically if I do go back to sleep at all, I will then be bombarded with dreams of a terrible nature and the feelings that I have will increase in their strength and severity. This is quite unusual to me because I am very much accustomed to sleeping soundly and peacefully. For the last couple of years, sleep has almost always been the one thing I can count on to consistently make me feel good in my life. It seems now that this is no longer the case.

I have a long list of things I wish to accomplish that are either down somewhere on paper or in my mind. Over the last several weeks since my return home, I have not really been able to accomplish any of them. I believe that I now understand that the feelings that hit me as soon as I wake up, and then are a burden the rest of the day, are related to this list of things that I have yet to accomplish. I feel that this list has become my job. These are tasks that I do not really want to do, but rather things that I must do and in this thought, all of these tasks then become my job. However, this job has no breaks and no time off. It is a job that exists every day of my waking life and has since I have returned home...that is until this morning when I awoke to find myself without anxiety and without fear for the first time in what seems like a long time. Now it all makes perfect sense because today was the first day since I have returned home that I did not expect myself to accomplish any task during the day. Today I expect myself to do absolutely nothing in the way of my "job". Today is simply about doing what I want to do, when I want to do it and nothing more. There are no expectations that will not be met. There is no fear about falling behind in my perfectionistic, task oriented mind. In essence, today is my first day off from work for a long time. Oddly enough, having a day off has given me the insight and passion to write a new blog. Ironically, writing a blog has been one of the things on my long list of tasks that I need to do. So here I am in the morning of my "day off" doing something that I have told myself that I needed to do for a long time now, but have not because of the overwhelming and all consuming feelings of anxiety and fear that have been controlling my life.

Now I need to determine what I should do now that I am aware of what is going on in my head and what is the major contributing factor to how I have been feeling since my return home. I suppose my cognitive behavior therapy training might come in handy in this case. Lowering my expectations of myself while at the same time giving myself credit for the things that I do accomplish may help me cope. I am very harsh on myself, and I know this...yet I find it very difficult to be anything but my own harshest critic and worst enemy.

THE NEW BLOG:
I am back from my TREK around the world and now the holidays are over. The question on my mind is where do I go from here? I really have no clue. Will I travel again? Maybe. If I do travel where will I go? I do not know.

This blog was made specifically to chronicle my travels around the world and the experiences that I had as I did them. It seems to me though, that this blog has evolved beyond to be just about travel. It has become something much more personal to me. It is a way for me to express my feelings and emotions in a way which could not otherwise be possible. Writing allows me to express parts of myself that I could not otherwise express. It helps me to sort out my feelings and emotions and also allows me to give the people in my life a way to perhaps better understand who I am and why I do what I do.

With this in mind, I have renamed my blog and changed the main focus to be not about my travels, but about me and my journey through life. Not quite as exciting I guess, but whatever.

Home Sweet Home

I have made it home safe and sound.

It feels quite awkward being back. I feel like I never left at times...then at other times I feel like I have been gone for years.

I will write a much longer and more extensive blog when I get some time to do so.

Flying Home

Today is my last day in China before my scheduled departure home. I have a sneaking suspicion that something is going to go wrong on my way back. I am a little worried about my VISA because I am cutting it very close to the expiration date. I will be relieved once I am on the plane heading back to America, but for now I am holding my breath hoping that everything will be okay.

1/1000

So I am now finished with my idea submission to Google's Project and the deadline for submission has passed. Looking at Google's Project 10^100 page now indicates that Google received over 100,000 submissions to the project. Only 100 ideas will be released to the general public to vote on in January. This means that I have less than 1 chance out of 1000 to get my submission into that top 100 project ideas. I have confidence in my idea, but 1/1000 is pretty stiff odds. It's not the lotto, but it is pretty intimidating.

I am concerned that my project might not touch enough peoples lives to be considered as a top idea. There are sure to be other ideas that would have direct effect on more peoples lives as compared to mine. I am excited to see what other ideas have been submitted; January cannot come fast enough. I have found some other submission ideas that have been posted online by the idea authors. So far I have seen about three or four. I am not the only one trying to promote my idea prior to January. UVOL needs the support of volunteer organizations and volunteers all over the world if it is to be a successful website. Therefore, I have started trying to spread the word about UVOL now. Even if it not chosen as one of the top 100 ideas, perhaps my own efforts to promote UVOL will open doors.

When the idea for UVOL first hit me, it was like a rush of mental craziness as my brain started thinking of all the possibilities for what can be included in the site and how it could change things. I do not think this idea would have formulated if not for Google's Project, however. Since I began writing my submission last month I have been going over in my head how I first started thinking about what eventually came to be my idea for UVOL. The idea was certainly born out of my personal frustrations in finding volunteer work which stem back all the way to my high school days. Over the years I have had numerous experiences which have led to the formulation of this idea. The most recent experience I am still...experiencing. Had I known exactly what the volunteer project here in Jiaozuo was like, I probably never would have come. Things here are very disorganized and I still have my doubts about how trustworthy the project coordinator is. If UVOL had existed when I was searching for volunteer positions in China, I would have known to steer clear of this project and would have had a much easier time in finding a more worthy project of my time. I must be thankful for this project though; it has allowed me the time and opportunity to spend many an hour working on my UVOL submission and it has directly contributed to my ideas about what UVOL will be and how it will work to solve the problems volunteers and project coordinators face.

Searching for a desired volunteer project is like trying to find a needle in a haystack; after a systematic and planned search you might find that needle after hours upon hours of relentless searching. The only problem is, you never really know how the particular project you find will be or what the people are like that run it. Many times it takes a leap of faith that the project is how it is made out to be in the description (just like I had to do with this project). Same thing goes for project coordinators that are trying to find volunteers as well; how can anyone be sure that a volunteer is trustworthy and will do the things that he/she says they will? With luck, UVOL will make things a bit more transparent in the volunteering world. This will instill confidence in projects and in volunteers allowing people to make more informed decisions. Hopefully this will allow more people to volunteer who otherwise would not even try.

In the world of technology, simplicity is king. UVOL aims to make volunteering simple which will help volunteerism penetrate into the minds of the mainstream masses.

Okay, enough about UVOL. In less than a week I will be in Shanghai. I am very excited to be moving onto the next thing here in China. I always hate goodbyes though. I am not looking forward to saying bye to people that I will probably never see again. Saying bye to one of my Tai Chi teachers will be especially difficult, I think. He and I have become quite good friends even with our very difficult time communicating with each other. He has been teaching me things about Tai Chi that he is apparently not supposed to. The Chinese culture is very interesting in this regard. From what I have gathered, their "secrets" and wisdom that has been accumulated over thousands of generations are only passed down through family or to very select individuals. It is only very recently in Chinese culture has this trend started to change and the open sharing of information been introduced into the minds of the Chinese people. My Tai Chi teacher's teacher is very upset with him that he has been teaching me the things that he has. Even though my teacher is being open with me by teaching me these Tai Chi secrets, he makes a point to tell me that I am not to pass on the things that I have learned even to other Chinese people that he considers friends. He says that they are not his students so they cannot be taught this information. I do not fully understand this concept and tradition, but I find it very fascinating. In any case, I am very humbled that he has accepted me as his student even though it is getting him in trouble with his teacher. It will be very difficult to say goodbye to him.

I will be taking a train to Shanghai, but I will not be immediately meeting up with my friend Alan in Shanghai. Alan's family own an apartment in Shanghai where I will be staying for a time, but at the moment there are some plumbing problems in the house and we cannot stay there until those are fixed. Upon my arrival to Shanghai on Monday, I will be staying with a couchsurfer. I am very thankful for the existence of couchsurfing and not just because I get to stay in wonderful people's houses for free. Couchsurfing has also played a part in formulating my ideas for UVOL. Anyway, I am looking forward to staying with another couchsurfer and I hope that one day when I have a place of my own I will be able to host people from around the world as well.

UVOL: Google's Project 10^100 Idea Submission

I have been working long and hard on my submission to Google's Project 10 to the 100th. Thank you to everyone who has helped me along in this process, I greatly appreciate it. With luck, UVOL will come into being and make finding a volunteer position easier, faster and more affordable for all.

The document below contains the description of what Google's project is along with my submission to the project. If you cannot see the document below, click the following link or copy and paste the text into your browsers address bar:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/7196515/UVOL-Googles-Project-10100-Idea-Submission

UVOL - Google's Project 10^100 - Idea Submission - Upload a Document to Scribd