I don’t like this world. I don’t like being surrounded by walls and breathing trapped air. I wonder if I’ll ever feel comfortable in this again.

Out on the trail I don’t get lonely or bored, but here I am a jittery mess. I want to run but I hate the race.

How can I possibly not find something to watch on t.v. with 500 channels? We have freaking on demand for god’s sake. Free movies section? There’s a reason they are free. Sitcoms? Infomercials? News-Tiger Woods, balloon boy?

I have said it before. My next adventure will be a trip to an uninhabited island in Fiji. I am going to Fiji just like Truman but I do not feel like I am living in The Truman Show. Are all of you actors? Did I have a camera crew following me my entire trip thus far? No. Paranoia.

I wonder though, why was I programmed this way? I wish I could just settle, and be content. I wish I could be satisfied with being unsatisfied, like most of you, content with being discontent, happy with being miserable. Maybe the taste of freedom, the taste of sheer joy, of peace, and my viewing of a world not at war has tainted me. I have seen bears that don’t want to eat me and met people who buy me meals. I have stood on top of mountains, towering over the plains singing “I’m on top of the world looking down on creation and the only explanation I can find.” I had gone for ten days without touching another human being, without seeing a building or even artificial light, carrying my world on my back. I had gone twenty days without showering, without sleeping in a bed. And you know what? I loved it.

But I am done with wishing I were different. Growing up I would think one day, I want to be the class clown, one day the peace-giver, the intellectual, the Thoreau, the Buddha, the Malcolm-X, the pacifist, the rebel. Maybe the Southern prep, maybe the professional triathlete, maybe the business man, the “comfortable” man.

But I know who I am. I am the guy that cannot live one life, discontent with a 100 year limit. And I am the guy that asks endless questions and will never fully understand.

I think about girls a lot, yeah? I met a wise man, an elementary school teacher, out for a couple days of backpacking with his son. He said to me “If you keep doing what you love to do and don’t change for anyone else, you’ll meet the perfect girl.” I wonder if there is a girl who wants to ride in the cockpit of a double kayak as we explore the Gulf coastline? Or maybe a girl who would like to explore an uninhabited island in Fiji.

I want to be free again. I don’t want to be caught in all the drama of artificial life. Thats what it is you know. We make up things to be upset about because thats how we are programmed. Rather in the woods, we don’t need to make things up. There are already hundreds of reasons to be upset- so many that we choose to give up being upset, and just be happy. I guess there was a time when people knew everyone was so friendly and nice. But at some point we became bored and decided the dialogue “Did you see that look he gave me?”, “Could you believe she said that?” was more exciting. We made up racist names. We decided to categorize people and stereotype them. We turned on our own human race, our allies, our best friends. I guess t.v. got boring. But in the woods, there is no spilt milk because there’s no damn milk. Now doesn’t that simplify things? People are nice. People are sweet (not the surfer terminoligy, moreso the way my mom uses the word). So find a hobby and I don’t want to hear about how rude she was to you ever again.