On Being Homesick: Signs & Symptoms

International train travel has always smacked of romance and mystery to me, and yet, as I look at my datebook (which is bursting to the brim with used travel tickets, upcoming show dates, the names and addresses of future Couchsurfing hosts, directions hither and thither, to and fro, blah blah blah, etcetera), mostly I just feel exhausted. In the past month, Dan and I have been from Amsterdam to Haarlem, Antwerp, Brussels, Ghent, Bruges, Paris, and then back to Amsterdam and on to The Hague. That's eight cities and three countries in less than thirty days. 

One part of me is supremely proud of this: not only for stepping outside of our comfort zone and traveling the world, but also for actually having some success with it. I mean, have you seen the music schedule lately? After some canal-side bench-sitting calculations, we realized that this month is our very first profitable month as artists. (No, we don't make nearly as much money as we did in New York, yet somehow, traveling the world is less expensive that keeping an apartment in NYC. Pick your jaw up.)

And yet - I catch myself daydreaming sometimes about the simplest things - things usually inhibited by our near-constant travel - things like drinking tea out of proper china cups on a rainy day, things like spending 24 hours in pajamas and not feeling guilty about it, things like not having to explain what I do for a living and sounding like a complete dimwit ("Oh, I, uh, travel and uh, write about it. On, uh, my blog and uh, other blogs? And sites? Sort of?"), things like maybe having this cavity filled once and for all. (I've been trying to Jedi mind-trick it into submission - and possibly into even healing itself - but I swear to Jehovah, this motherlicker is brutal. BRUTAL.)

And yet - even as I write this, I think of myself: what a whiny baby brat. How can you even dare to complain about waking up at 10 o'clock most mornings (except for those two weeks in Groningen) and fashioning your day as you see fit? How can you moan about finally doing what you've always said you would? Why are you even bothering to publicly rant about these things as if this is Livejournal circa 2002? (Which - ew.)

The truth, though, is that sometimes you hit this wall and the only thing you can do is keep banging your head against it until you've knocked some sense back into yourself. So don't be surprised to find yours truly one day, sitting on top of a pile of bricks with a huge welt on my forehead and a smile across my face. Healing, it's a process.

P.S. If you're wondering where that middle photo was taken (you know, the one with the gorgeous castle?) that is in the historic center of Prague. Go there, quick as you can.