6/8/2023

Hello Blog Readers,

It’s been a long time since I’ve done a blog like this one. In fact, it’s been precisely eight years to the day since I’ve done a blog like this one. At that time, I was planning an out of country trip to backpack western Canada, and I was showcasing Canadian money. Now, I’m planning a trip to Japan and showcasing Japanese money. But before I go on with this blog, let’s see what I had to say way back when, and how it compares to today:

(Me on June 8, 2015)

“Hello Blog Readers,

So as stated in my previous blog entry, several developments have arisen both as to the travel itinerary and my personal life.  As these events have transpired, I’m reminded more and more that, in spite of what some hipster idealist might preach, it’s money that makes this world go round and it’s money that decides how far you get to go in life.  And no, this is not me announcing that I’m cutting the summer road-trip short (although the responsible side of me is saying that I probably should make that announcement as recent unanticipated expenses on the vehicle and home front have left me financially drained).  Rather, I’m pointing out the obvious:  There is a reason not that many people actually get to break out of their life routines to journey to distant lands.  It is expensive to travel.  However, you need to do it anyways.  You need to take risks.  You need to have adventures.  You need to make sure that you spend as much of your life as possible pushing yourself beyond your comfort zone and taking in new experiences and new perspectives.  It is the only way to live a life without regret.  It is the only way to find out who you really are in this world and to know what you can and cannot achieve.

The one caveat to the advice is this:  Don’t just travel to travel.  Don’t do it to escape your career for a few weeks or to slop around in luxury and gluttony that you then post onto Facebook in an attempt to make others envious.  Travel to really learn something about yourself; to find an inner courage, skill, or strength that you never knew existed.  Then, when you return from your journey, zealously use that newfound ability to make your home a better place.  Just as your travels should cause a transformation within you, make sure that your travels end up also causing a similar transformation within your community.  It could be as simple as inspiring another to get out and see what he or she always wanted to see in the world, or it could be as major as learning some new trade or skill in a foreign land which you then turn into a business in your hometown. Whatever it is, make sure it helps those around you grow.  Don’t hoard the treasures you gain from traveling.  Share them.”

Hmmm. I was far more zealous about life a decade ago than I am today. I wasn’t as emotionally scarred back then as I am today. I wasn’t as scarred by politics both national and local, by society, by persons whom I assumed I could love and trust but in whom I only found betrayal, heartbreak and sadness. It was a world before Trump and Biden; it was a world before the global toil we all smell in the world today; a world before endless wildfires and smoke-filled skies; a world before happily watching my students grow and then despairingly watching the school where I loved to teach shut down; and a world before my total heartbreak and the inability to trust in relationships moving forward. It was a world where I was fully vested in my small town of Red Bluff and never once dreamed that I would some day be living in some small, largely unknown town in Northern Michigan. And I was FAR healthier and in FAR better shape back then. Back then, I benched around 200 lbs in spite of my slight frame, my abs popped for sure, and I could run forever. In fact, I can vividly remember one day near the time of me writing the above blog entry where I opened the door to my house for a girl who was stopping by to rendezvous for our evening date after I went for a run. I hadn’t yet had the chance to shower, and with her arriving early and me sweaty and post-workout I actually had the courage to answer the door for her shirtless and in my running shorts. It might have been the only time in my life where a woman actually ogled me.

These days, I’m far from healthy and far from optimistic in life. In fact, as I’m writing these words, I’m quite ill. With the heavy smoke and allergens in the air, a pneumonia set into my lungs and I’ve missed most of this week at work because of it. And I’m much more out of shape than I was at 29, and I’m much less trusting of individuals. I would never open a door shirtless and nonchalantly for another human being in 2023. And though I still love what I wrote back in 2015 – it was so optimistic and driven – these days I would agree with my former self on the expense of travel and the need for it, but disagree with him that it absolutely must exist to gain some inner truth or to serve some local community that might not even be your home later down the road. Sometimes, travel indeed just exists to escape from life and experience places and cultures that you’ve never seen before. Sometimes, travel does indeed exist to be a strange but working mix of the frivolous and the eye-opening, the spiritually enlightening and the stress relieving. It’s more than just a learning tool.

So, in that spirit I will indeed be in Japan next month. Oddly, I was originally planning a trip to Japan already, but not until the fall or spring. It was to be a trip far more expanded than the upcoming trip, with an itinerary largely in Hokkaido and the Japanese Alps. I was actually planning that trip and otherwise dreaming about it with a woman in whom I was slowly growing to trust. In spite of her being out west braving Southern California and me being here, our cross-continent conversations were great, and I saw the faintest hints of moving on from past heartbreak and paving a brave (and fun) future between the two of us kickstarting with a big, shared trip in Japan. And it all made sense. She was someone important from my past, and someone who seemed to have matured a lot in both spirit and intellect. There was something there.

Yet, around Easter or my birthday (somewhere around that time), she went in a very different direction to the point that we are no longer talking. And then, on top of it, around that same time I had finished writing not one but two novels. I felt that these novels were the hallmark work product of my brain so far in life, but as I shared them with others I heard little-to-no feedback on the books. I was so proud of them, and yet the lack of people reading them felt like a form of rejection in its own right, and it brought me to an exceedingly dark place over these past few months. I fell into a spiritual desert where I felt that all of my life was intended for nothing but rejection and pain inflicted by at least the fairer half of humanity and the smoke in the air, and I felt that I was being laughed at by God or the Devil or some cosmic thing (it’s been dark enough in my life these past few months to where I probably owe a person or two an apology – and I definitely need to work hard to return to form in my VERY God-focused career that needs to remain mindful of the good things and spiritual blessings occurring in our daily lives).

Anyways, this trip to Japan wasn’t the trip that I had planned or anticipated. Instead, my sister and brother-in-law received a spontaneous invitation to the fabled country, to celebrate my sister’s birthday at a Michelin-starred sushi restaurant, and they reached out to me to see if I’d like to tag along. And over these past few weeks, a trip itinerary coalesced between us, around Osaka, Kyoto, Tokyo, and the neighboring cities and summer countryside. So that’s where I’ll be next month. And I’m very surprised how quickly and efficiently that things are falling into place, and it somehow brings me back to that (sometimes seemingly illogical) optimism and faith-in-God once again. It might be the needed ‘shot in the arm’ of hope after falling into my recent spiritual desert. Maybe there is a reason in everything and why it transpires the way that it does – maybe there’s a reason in how I could go from randomly starting to study Japanese a year ago and getting excited about the culture, to writing a seemingly failed novel about Japan, to planning a failed trip to the country with someone who spurned my heart, to finally agreeing to and planning a separate trip there with family. Maybe there’s a reason still behind the pain of ongoing rejection by others and the doors that it somehow opens, no different from the pain of my past between 2015 and today and the doors that it opened for me, from a former home in California to my current home here in Marquette. It is all kind of mysterious and baffling to me. But it seems to be working. So, as I often end in my emails to people, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart…and He shall direct your paths.”

I’ll be updating this blog soon from 日本! But first, I will be heading down to Kentucky and bourbon country for a work-related conference (assuming that I get over being sick right now). So, I’ll be writing to you soon – next weekend from Louisville.

Cheers,

-Rob