Those who wander end up teaching English

When you see the world, you have the opportunity to do great things. Creatives are on the loose as global nomads who create content on the go. You can write about the great outdoors, the food, the dreamy honeymoon destinations, and all the things you'd think are cool. But not all travelers only chase just the cool.

I decided to long-term travel because there was a lot of character building that needed to be done. It's been a long life journey of hopeless romantic antics that lead me to be a male doormat that people often push around because of my lack of cajones to stand up for myself. It was a lot of drama that I absorbed into my world because I could only feel the thrill when it was devastating. I felt like my addictions made my void larger and larger, and no matter what I threw into the hole, everything just seemed meaningless. I wanted to see a different picture of myself. No matter how long I stayed in the States, I would just stay depressed because the people all around me were depressed. So I ran away from the English language.

I developed my mother tongue and then it hit me. Thai people are depressed too, but their third world nature makes them repel it from getting in the way of their needs. They don't talk about it. There are no words for your emotions unless you're experiencing a first world life. I found that as I expressed my darkness in Thai, I realized that I wasn't getting anywhere with my drama addiction, because drama abets more drama, and it'll follow you until the world ends.

I had to face it headfirst, and make rules for engagement.

Drama is something you must be able to wriggle out of even if you're familiar with the story.

When you allow it to consume your attention, you've chosen to get into the hole with the person who is struggling. It may be due to your past experience that you've confidently hopped right into their situation because you wish to compassionately help them get out. Time is the essence of survival because when you're in the hole, you've got to always check how much air you have left. If your buddy decides to do something wreckless, like decide that he's not coming up and just fighting you until it gets dangerous, you must be able to fold. Get out of there, because the toxic nature of the drama monster will not be a character building exercise.

It's going to be like Dumbledore saying how much he wants to stop drinking and you're Harry Potter telling him to drink the kool-aid.

Pulling out takes practice, but you'll save tons of lives if that drama monster doesn't get born!

I feel like we forget to admit defeat because we are confident that we are strong enough to change people. We often feel like the advice we have forged with our souls will be so valuable that our little student will become the next karate kid. But when you think that your triple jacks are worth the all-in when your opponent rolls out a triple king, the world is just full of surprises. Drama is contagious and it will manifest itself onto your energy and like Napoleon the Great, Drama will go viral and try to take this world over. It may feel like we're a shitty friend, but there will always be situations that drag us too deep into the water. Medical professionals are unbiased listeners that can help train the monster where friends and family could be fragile situations that the monster finds opportunities to destroy. Often times we're defensive when we're overwhelmed with our drama and attack everyone like we're an animal backed up in a corner.

We can only guide the people that choose to love us with opening their heart to our words and actions.

The people usually spouting advice are those who really need help themselves.

Often we are crawling into other people's holes because it's so much better than sitting in our own hole trying to figure out why being creative is so damn hard. It's scary to sit alone and make something beautiful come out of it. We got out of our hole because we learned to escape. But it's still there. And when we are forced to see what's down there, our mind plays tricks on us. The demons set traps and a few seconds later, we are back in this hole. The damn thing that our brain and heart can't ever seem to outgrow. When we are triggered, the pin of the grenade is pulled, and now our heart is pumping crazy fast and there's nothing we can do about it.

Enter the Breath, stage left.

Getting back to shifting our own gears after driving automatic our your life can be extremely difficult. It's almost as if when our transmission automatically shifts our gears, it really forgets that we have more than 2 gears. When life drives you really fast, and you're flooring your pedal, your engine really overheats. Heats like a disagreement on what to eat for dinner tonight and you've lost all your patience and 'give-a-fucks' and now you're sending your spouse a rampage on how frustrating it is to come home to this. We don't see this coming. That damn car behind us really rides our ass and now we want to have a shotgun to shoot out their damn tires. We're automatically breathing, so anger really comes when it wants to. Shame and guilt come when we've generated scary thoughts and impulses when our empathic brain shifts on to stop us from going to prison. Now our worthiness gets challenged because somebody we love told us that we are a good person and by having these violent thoughts, we no longer feel we are worthy to be good. Now we're in a hole.

It almost feels like a sport to me now, after getting in and out of my holes so often. Sometimes life feels really good when I think that my holes no longer exist because I simply denied their existence and walked the other way. It almost feels like the universe sends me positivity and life-long teachers along the way as I wander the world. Then out of the world's provably fair algorithm, my hole comes out of nowhere. I trip and fall right into it. This time, I'm able to breathe manually, because when I'm wandering the world, short breaths don't cut it. I practiced deep diaphragm breathing and took my time every day to imagine where I am sending my breath to inside my body. I am able to chant my healing chants from my Lomi Lomi instructor and feel my mana being grounded to the Earth as the Earth's mana rises to my feet. I am able to send my chi to different meridians and back to my dantian with my Qi-gong practice.

I have fallen into my hole, but I've never noticed the ghosts that I've left behind in them.

They're like little fragments of my spirits, that get left behind in these holes. Like how Sonic needs to collect stars to receive points for some oddly unknown reason, I've got to sit long enough in these holes for these little things to appear. I'm able to compassionately collect the fragments and they become something I've never imagined they could be.

They are attributes I lacked because no one else can give these to you besides your own soul.

These little stars give me the attributes of growth. I don't need to climb out of the hole and run from it. I've sat in there long enough to see what I couldn't let go of, what I'm truly scared of, and the voices that downplay me and set shame on me like dosing gasoline into my hole and setting it on fire. Collecting the small fragments, whatever attribute that I can truly acknowledge that is part of me, makes the current hole something I could move on from. The hole will still be there, but I will always remember that I've already collected my trapped spirit and decide not to dive in anymore.

Mileage will vary, but the more you're aware of how to maintain your machine, the better you will be able to handle the endless potholes life will keep giving you.