Life is hard. It´s true.
I´ve lamented before of how moving on every couple of days can be tiresome lonely difficult, yet I´m sure that if I were to return back to the U.S. (as I wished for an hour or more today) I would be back in my small Amarillo town with little more clarity on my post-college ambitions and more stress than I create for myself in Argentina.

But today has been a difficult day.
I´ve been in Bariloche, the town where I spent Christmas for almost a week, waiting, preparing, fretting.

I´ve filled the time over this week: I went to a vista on a mountain, I went to the water-worn rock beach on the lake, I made a hommos dinner accompanied by fresh baked pita bread. I took a 2 day trek to a lake surrounded by jagged granite spires that´s popular with rock climbers, I´ve eaten disgusting amounts (around 2 pounds) of red meat in one sitting, I took 2 hours of one on one spanish school, walked to what I realized was a drive in movie and met an Estonian girl who did the same thing and has hitchhiked throughout Patagonia. I´ve filled the days more or less, but daily and sometimes more than daily I become overwhelmed by deep regret.

Regret of:
1) staying in Bariloche for a week waiting for friends of a guy I met in Ushuaia (the end of the world) to go trekking when I could be seeing other parts of south America.
2) not travelling together with a sweet German girl whom I met in my hostel, who I should have taken the effort to get to know, but instead did nothing, who I should have asked if I could travel with, but then never did and never saw again
3) Not working upon my 2 main goals of travelling in Latin America, improving my Spanish, improving my Salsa dancing.

So today I told the guys I´ve been waiting for that I didn´t want to go trekking anymore, that I´ve been waiting too long, just like they say in economics
my time waiting is a sunk cost, so why should it affect my current decision? It´s logical, isn´t it?

But then I didn´t know where to go, I haven´t researched Chili, I didn´t book a bus, I had already bought food and a bus ticket for 5 days for the hike, I flipped coins and thought, weighed, decided, wavered decided again and here I am finally resigned to an amazing trek through the mountains.

Well, I said life is hard.
It´s like Teach said in psychology, there´s a set-point of happiness that you vacillate around, so maybe you´re normally at mildly amused, but can fall into despair or rush up to ecstatic depending on your environment and body chemicals.

My ethos since high school has been to ¨swallow the world¨. Do and be as much as I can, try everything take in as many experiences as possible, but it´s not working. Trying to avail myself of every opportunity, learn be and do everything leaves me wanting and sad: I always think about what I´m missing, what I should be doing, how I could be improving (and competing with everybody around me).

Today I layed in my shitty hostel bed for more than an hour without the motivation to so much as take off my shoes or get headphones to listen to music thinking that I didn´t know where I was going next, what I wanted to do, that I hated my life all I wanted to do was go back to the U.S. but then there would be nothing for me there either, feeling hopeless and angry at myself for staying in this damn city for too long, thinking that I could still wiggle my way out of the trek but then where would I go anyways - uncertain and unhappy.

And then, I fell asleep, got up, got my headphones, put on LP3 by Ratatat, went out to get the few last things I needed for my trek and bought trout for dinner. And a smile appeared upon my face, I regained a much needed spring in my step. But it´s been like this for days, hopes rise and crash depending on my mood and the people i´m around and in the end i´m left feeling confused and rather hopeless.

Not to mention full of self-pity

I just hiked some of the most beautiful scenery anywhere, ever.
Unfortunately I still don´t have a camera, so you´ll just have to google Torres del Paine to see the fit-for-post-card pictures. But ya, it was amazing, but I didn´t have any friends to hike with. Actually I met this guy and we were going to go together, but he had bought a bus ticket for a different time than I, so we were supposed to meet, but then I went to the wrong camp and we never met up, so then I didn´t have any friends to camp with and I didn´t really bring enough food, so I had to eat bread and dried fruit, and I tried to throw my bag across a river, but I slipped right before the third heave, so it fell in the water, but luckily my Ipod and passport stayed dry and then it was cold cause my stuff was wet and I couldn´t sleep and I was feeling sorry for myyyself, and then I met these 2 Spaniards and 2 French youths who were really friendly and nice and then everything was Okay, and now I´m going to the tip of South America, Tierres del Fuego tomorrow.

I think I left out some stylistic flare, but that´s a summary.

A side note of note

So my original posts were dark, heated and angry. During the majority of my travels in Eastern/Southern Africa I was taking Mefloquine. I checked on WebMD and they described some of the symptoms as follows:

In some people, mefloquine may rarely cause more serious side effects, such as depression, anxiety, paranoia, hallucinations, confusion, and psychotic behavior. Mefloquine has also been associated with tremor, mood changes, and panic attacks. If you have a history of depression or other psychological conditions, mefloquine may not be right for you. If you take mefloquine and develop anxiety, depression, restlessness, or confusion, contact your doctor immediately, because you may need to stop taking mefloquine and try a different medication.

So, can I blame all the bad moods and lack of compassion and outright anger on the pills I took once a week?
I think I can.
Happy Holidays!

can´t handle the pressure

Man is blogging tough

I saw penguins, and then I made christmas dinner, and then I had 2 days on buses that started friendly and amiable, but slowly wore down my store of good will and burnt a deep blue frost into my soul. And then I saw a glacier, and drank for New Years, and drank Whiskey quickly because I started late, and now I´m going hiking.