It has been almost a year and a half since I got back from my travels and I still feel as if I’m not meant to be here.
While on the road for such a long time I would find that I was craving the mundane routines, I actually missed being stationary. Seeing new things and meeting new people everyday took its toll.
Since I have been back, I have been quite content to hide away from the world and have a scheduled job to attend each day – however when starting it was very difficult working the 8 solid hours after a year of no work, also the work itself is quite intensive.
With each working day rolling into the next, the lack of time in the day is so much more evident when I can recently remember what it was like to have unlimited.
It has been an interesting observation.
I find it absolutely shocking that such a long time has past, it feels like only a few months at the most, I feel as if I have accomplished very little (other than a career). What each and everyone of us endures everyday, such dreadfully long hours, I find it hard to believe we apparently live in a higher echelon of world society. Or perhaps I have done what I was not meant to have, left the bubble for too long.
I am too tired after work to draw or write or socialise or do anything that can help me develop as a person; If I have had a good day at work and I’m feeling less-tired, by the time I settle down after work to attempt a free-activity, it is time to sleep in order to wake up refreshed enough to have the energy to attempt to use my free time the following day.
Instead, the easiest thing to do is watch TV shows, entertaining enough to feel as if my free time has been spent wisely – and mentally/physically non-exerting enough to still feel rested to ensure this mouse-wheel keeps spinning.
How did it come to this. I was going to be a new Nic, using my newly fined worldly social skills to go on adventures, meet new people, keep that backpacker grin; Live a grand and happy life like the expressions of all those thousands of people on anti-depressants, except without the requirement of artificial brain chemicals.
Time is the killer.
I never have time. People who manage to make time are people who have easy day jobs.
I need to find the best of both worlds; and I need to do this soon.
p.s. I also need to use my weekends wisely and catch up with more people. I am attempting to routinely visit the ezra pound after work on fridays if anyone wants to pop in and be merry. All welcome.
The 5000 Project 
hi! i’ve read this post after sven cited you in his blog (http://www.hetjaarvandehond.be/). i totally understand you and that is why 3 years ago i decided to leave my job and go for a phd (in urban sociology)…i also found those evenings at home empty, with no time to do what you like, so i though that doing something that i did like would enhance my quality of life. in some ways it did, while not for other things. time is anyway also an issue and – want it or not – we have to learn how to be effectively managers of our time according to our priorities. i want to keep this post short but definitely you hit a point: where is oneself in the routine, every day life of our western world? there are scholarly accounts on how the former peasants became disciplined to adjust to the mass production working schedule…that is why i like sociology, because it asks why it is so in society. anyway, think also that you do your best, everyday…if you want to change something of course you have to act in the present, as you are doing already. so i hope that you will soon find a project, or that “something” that fills your life and makes you live vibrantly as you wish.
Thanks for your post – yeah sociology does sound very interesting, halfway through my computer science degree I was very tempted to swap over to psychology; at that stage though, I had enough of uni and needed to get the study over and done with.
I now work as a computer programmer; denial of free thought is an occupational hazard.
The strategy guys think up how the job will work, the design guys lay out exactly how it will look and cut up the images. I simply put it all together and make it work as instructed. Sure I accomplish something in the end, but I don’t feel as if I use any creativity in the process. Swapping to a field that will make life easier and more positive seems like a large step to take, but you’re right, it’s worth considering; I’m not too old.