Letter from Honolulu

October 25, 2011

When I decided to go traveling for a year I really thought that I could travel for like two and half to three months at a shot, then come back to Hawaii for a week or 10 days, just catch up on stuff, and then take off for another two and half to three months.

Nice plan!

But totally out of touch with reality.

I have now realized, after my first quick Hawaii check-in has turned into a five-week stay, during which I have worked 12 to 14 hour days most of the time, that it’s not that simple.

I forgot that I would have 3 months of stuff to catch up on every time I come home!

Also, when I returned to Hawaii on September 15 after 2+ months of traveling, my apartment in Waikiki still hadn’t been rented. This was puzzling to me. It’s a great apartment, great location, and the property management people seemed to be doing a good job of showing it.

It was frustrating because I’d been counting on that rental income. On the other hand, it
was nice to have a place to stay while back in Hawaii.

Then, about a week after my return, I went out for a drink with my friend Steph (read about Steph and our 2008 Brazil travels together here). I told her I still hadn’t rented my apartment and she got excited. She and her friend Brian had been looking for a place in Waikiki…you can figure out the rest!

(Now I understood why the apartment hadn’t rented for 3 months…it was waiting for Steph!)

That was the perfect solution to one problem, but it created another. They wanted to move in immediately, which meant I no longer had a place to stay, and no immediate prospects for one.

But y’know, I wasn’t worried. One thing about my new lifestyle: it’s making me a lot more comfortable with uncertainty. My first 9 weeks on the road, traveling across North America and back again, was like the path of a tropical storm: unpredictable, erratic, and totally dependent on the winds, temperature and currents for direction and destination.

I’d been kind of apprehensive when I started my long-term traveling, with a make-it-up-as-you-go approach. I wasn’t sure I really had the balls to live this way!

Turns out I do. In fact, so far I’m loving it. One of the best, and least-expected, benefits of living this way, being open to circumstance and trusting rather than knowing what’s coming next, is that wonderful, unexpected things keep coming my way.

• In LA, standing in line at Whole Foods in Brentwood, I looked behind me to see my publisher friend Richard, an old friend from Hawaii. I’d been trying to reconnect with him online for the past year or so. I got a chance to meet him and his wife Michele, who is lovely and already a friend, for lunch and catching up.

• In Lincoln, Nebraska, where I hardly expected it, I met a woman who, like me, is just beginning to discover her abilities as an energy worker and healer. I spent a whole day with Bonnie and we not only did healing work on each other, we both learned a lot.

• In New Orleans, I got on the shuttle for the airport in the rainy pitch-black of 3:20 a.m. and met Kath, a beautiful woman from Australia who is a seeker in many of the same ways as I am. She was on her way to an adventure in Cuba. We talked all the way to the airport, then found ourselves on the same flight, in seats next to each other, and again, talked all the way to Miami. We parted with a big hug and we’re now in touch via Facebook.

• In LA, I reconnected with an old boyfriend who is now a dear friend, and has been a flight attendant for the past 20 years. When he heard about my new traveling lifestyle, he set me up with a buddy pass on his airline.

• A friend I’ve known since my early days in Hawaii happened to be in LA when I was and saw me on Facebook and invited me to lunch. It was a wonderful reconnection and great to see him. When we said goodbye, he gave me an envelope and said, Open this later. When I got home, I opened it, and out fell $1400 in 100-dollar bills. It turns out that 30 years ago in Hawaii, I had loaned him $500 to buy a motorcycle. I’d forgotten long ago, but he not only remembered, he repaid me plus 30 years of interest.

I almost fell over when I opened that envelope, because I’d been wondering how I would manage, moneywise, over the next couple of months.

It seems the more uncertain my life is, the more space there is for unexpected blessings. I thought it would be a challenge to live this way, and certainly at times it is, but mostly I just feel blessed, and I love the way I’m learning to trust.

So I wasn’t worried about finding a place to stay even though it was Sunday night and my new tenants were moving in on Monday and I did not want to be the landlord crashing on the living-room floor! So I decided I would go out that evening, and just trust that things would fall into place.

Within a half-hour of my arriving at the bar, I ran into a friend of mine named Allen, who happened to have an empty house that needed housesitting…for 3 weeks, which was just the amount of time I would be on the island. He even had a car I could use.

Believe me when I say this was not the type of thing that used to happen to me when I was living a safe, conservative life, staying in one place and playing it relatively safe.

I spent the next 3 weeks in Honolulu drawing, painting, writing, and doing the million things required of me before taking off again. And today, as I write this from seat 13A on American Airlines flight 162 from Honolulu to LA, I feel ready for the next phase of the adventure.

(Another unexpected plus just now: one of the flight attendants is an old friend, and he’s been sending me free beer and anything else I want.)

ADDENDUM:

I’m now in the airport waiting for my flight to Dallas where I connect to my flight for São Paulo. I’ve just spent a wonderful couple of days in LA with my friend Kurt Brown. Kurt and I got a chance to work together on his first e-book (watch for that on my site!) It was great spending time with Kurt and his roommate Jacob (shown at right), despite the rainy weather while I was there.

So I’m about to get on the plane now. I just checked my e-mail and I see that my friend Dave, who’ll be my host in São Paulo, is throwing a party for me day after tomorrow. Can’t wait!

(Be watching for upcoming Letters from Brazil!)