I continue to have lots of free time while I'm in Vancouver, and I've spent a lot of that time reading and assessing my life. I came across a quote in a book which basically states "If you had all of the time and all of the money in the world, what would you do?" Since reading that, I have spent a lot of time trying to figure this out.

 I find that I have subconsciously told myself that whatever it is must be limited to music, but I think it would be beneficial for me to convince myself that that is not true, and that really anything is a possibility. I know for sure that part of what I want will include music because music performance is definitely one of the most exhilarating experiences for me. There is even a good chance that all I do will be music - but giving myself the flexibility of knowing that what I end up doing could be other things too is somewhat liberating. A new question that I found in the book "The Four Hour Work Week" which I think is one degree easier to deal with than " What would you do?" is "What excites you?" 

I know that travel definitely excites me, as does meeting new people. Music excites me as well. Ideas excite me. I continue to toy with the idea of being a high school teacher, but I'm not entirely sure if that's what I want to be doing. I feel like it's something that I wouldn't mind doing, but the thought of it doesn't particularly excite me. Still, volunteering at a school would be a great thing for me to do so as to get a feel for whether I like it or not.

Backtracking to my thoughts about being back on land instead of on the ship. Life is good here, and I've been able to reconnect with a lot of people. One thing that I haven't mentioned which I've  been realizing is the difference between socializing on land and socializing on a ship. It took me a week or so to remember how to do here it properly, because I find that being on a ship makes you perceive people in a different kind of way.  I enjoy the richness of relationships and people back home a lot, because any one single relationship on the ship is rarely quite as deep because you never spend a lot of time with just one other person on the ship. I think you assign more value to time spent with friends on land, simply because it's so much harder to come by. On the ship, you can hardly escape people, so every moment spent with other people becomes devalued due to it's excess, like everything in life. 

Two more days until I am off again, this time to the Mediterranean. I really feel connected again in Vancouver, which is nice because I guess in the back of my mind I was kind of afraid that I would lose contact with people I had spent time with before, but in fact I've had a lot of people contact me who I did not expect to hear from at all, which has been a very pleasant surprise. I feel a little bit guilty leaving again so soon, but it's much better this way rather than getting myself too re-established on land, which would then make it that much harder to pick up and leave again. Better to do my travels and adventuring all at once, I think, in one big chunk, and then somewhere down the road put down roots again and build and rebuild relationships that I will not be disconnecting myself from all of the time.