I wasn’t sure when I should write this, I wasn’t sure how I should write this, I just knew I had to write this. Nana Hank passed away on March 9th and that was a pretty shitty event. It’s true, I might use the word shitty a few times in here but is there a better word to describe death? It’s not ideal, it’s not fun, it’s not just simply bad, it’s not just simply unfortunate, it’s shitty through and through.  At one point I wondered, if I write an epic, beautiful thought about Nana will they get me to read this at her celebration of life? Probably not if you use shitty repeatedly. I understand how Nana died suddenly, that she didn’t suffer, that for all intents and purposes it was an act of god and no one could have predicted it. Which I think makes it shittier. There’s a big difference between preparing yourself for the death of someone and having it happen in the blink of an eye. One can understand that someone is old, one can understand that someone isn’t invincible, that someone isn’t immortal but no one wants to think about how quickly someone can be here and then not be. Because it applies to all of us, it doesn’t matter if you’re 93 or 25, anything can happen and this can be your last breath. And no one wants to think like that because no one wants to live in constant worry and fear. I’m not trying to write about what happened to Nana, I don’t even know what I’m trying to write about Nana. I just know that she was always more popular than me. Even if I introduced her to my own friends it seemed by the end of the night that she would have a new set of best friends. No woman is perfect and Nana isn’t the exception to the rule, but I still can’t think of a lady, a person, that couldn’t go into a room of strangers and end up with everyone of them wanting to see her again. She taught me that two dirty martinis a night is the secret to a long life. She just never told me that those drinks tasted like salt water. She taught me that Alabama football was the most important thing in life and then maybe make sure you had your cocktails was second. She loved her grandchildren, she loved boys, she loved my friends, she wouldn’t hide it if you put on five pounds. It’s hard to speak about Nana because I don’t know what to say. She has been a part of my life since the beginning, she was the first person to hold me, I believe she narrowly avoided me peeing on her and let the doctor take the brunt of it instead. She was around me for my whole life and though I knew she was old, I never thought anything would happen with her. She always complained about living, she told that getting old sucked, she told me she wished she didn’t have to be here anymore but she kept persevering. I didn’t think anything could happen to her, hell, I thought she’d outlive me and I’m only in my 20s. I just want Nana to know, I just want everyone to know that she made them a better person by her influence. By knowing her, that people improved by being in her presence. She may be gone but she isn’t forgotten and I hope no one forgets her because how can you? How many sons, grandsons can be said they were named after their own grandmother? I know the answer is few but I sure am honored that I got to share a name with her. I love her, I will keep on loving her, and I’m surely gonna miss the hell out of her. As I told my mother, as I told my friends, my family, I’m just finally glad that no matter where they are, she’s back in touch with Stanhope. They’re up there somewhere drinking a coke with Bear Bryant and that makes me happy. So it goes.

Zoinks! Craiky! I’ve always wanted to start a blog combining my two favorite men in the history of entertainment media. Shaggy and Steve Irwin. And yes, I do mean Shaggy from Scooby-Doo but I also think that Shaggy of “It Wasn’t Me” fame would probably be in my top 5. I should mention that the only reason I even started quoting the beloved Casey Kasem and Stevie boy was because I realized how long it has been since I’ve even written a blog. Which was upsetting. Because going back to Alabama for the first time in four years is a pretty momentous occasion and I’m definitely experiencing things that I haven’t in quite some time. With that said, this blog is not about how I haven’t been blogging. This paragraph is just something I did not have planned to write but I felt I needed to include it.

I want to write a musical. I don’t even know what I mean by that but I wanted to write a blog about it because I feel that when I start typing stuff then ideas come to my head and I start to achieve some clarity. Why do I want to write a musical? That’s a good question. Maybe just because I like musicals. Maybe because when I was abroad and truly was devoted to this blog, everyone told me, “Hank you should write a book.” Do I have desire to write a book though? No, not entirely. I mean sure, a lot of actors who never amounted much in their careers write memoirs about their life of which no one is interested. At least I could probably write something more entertaining than a D-List celebrity. Apparently David Hasselhoff has written a book. Apparently he’s also released over 1o musical albums too. And he’s starred in musicals! I never knew one could get so much work over a show about lifeguards and working with a talking car with the voice of Mr. Feeny from Boy Meets World. And now they’re making a R-Rated version of Baywatch too for a movie? Sure, I watched the show and I enjoyed it but I was young then! I was dumb! I was easily transfixed by large chested women in one piece bathing suits. See, this is what I’m saying about the blog and never knowing where it’ll go. I had no idea I’d go on a rant about how Baywatch is an actual thing. I don’t know man, I just very much enjoy improvising beautiful songs of wonder on the fly. I feel if there was ever a Glee or Pitch Perfect or even just any acapella group devoted explicitly to made up original, quasi-offensive songs then I’d be your guy. Does this mean I have any idea on how to formulate a musical? No, no, of course I don’t. I mean I knew this before but I barely realized that I might be better suited for writing an opera. Except I don’t think anyone would ever be interested in an opera by yours truly. Opera just seems too regal, it seems that it’s full of singers with their vibrato and high class. I just forgot that a musical actually has a plot and dialogue outside of the songs. You’re right though invisible person that I’m pretending to speak to, there has to be a person that just writes the songbook. Do people actually do both? That’s like writing a movie script and producing an album. People don’t have that much talent, you gotta pick and choose! Oh golly, this could be a lot harder than what I thought. Maybe I want to write an experimental album that tells a story throughout the songs. But that makes it seem like I’d want to ever perform this, I don’t want to perform this, I want to write parts for “Ensemble” and “Tree #2.” What I’m trying to say is that I don’t aspire to be John Travolta, I just aspire to create the next John Travolta. Unless you’re the time that argued Saturday Night Fever made John Travolta compared to Grease and you could be right but I’ve only seen Grease so I’m going with what I know, even though Saturday Night Fever could also be a musical as well and I’m not sure because I’ve never seen it but didn’t a Beegee write it? You get it. You get what I’m saying. I have no  idea how to write a play, though I have no idea how to write anything. I just do. So with that said, I will begin to formulate this musical. I might just write random songs. I guess it is true that musicals are supposed to have a plot and be linked thematically. It’ll all work out. I just wanted to type this out in the blogosphere so maybe I actually begin work on my magnum opus. Though I imagine one wouldn’t say their first work is their magnum opus. I’m not a one hit wonder. I’m Andrew Lloyd Webber. But…better. Better though I have no experience and he’s considered one of the all time greats. Getting a bit too cocky. I’m sorry, I’m just trying to motivate myself! Hank Wolf: The Musical. Coming soon. So it goes.

…is an ongoing one. A one that started way back in 2008 and here I am still at it in 2016. Just imagine I’m going for a doctorate or something. I kept wanting to write a blog post about going back to Alabama, then my first few days in Alabama, then watching Alabama win another national championship, then my first day of classes, then my first week of classes, and finally I’m just writing this because it’s a Tuesday and I only had one class and I can’t put it off much any longer. Not because I want to put it off but rather I never know if anyone wants to read what I have to say. Which is a stupid way to think because I know that most everyone wants to read what I have to say and when people see that I don’t have any new updates they get really sad and their day is ruined. I’m not here to ruin any days, any weeks, any lives. The blog is here, the blog is here to stay and I’ll try to update it more regularly. I’ve been in Alabama for ten days or so now and I must say it’s a quite different experience than me being here four years ago. I say that because when I first pulled into Tuscaloosa I wasn’t met with a sense of dread but rather a sense of excitement. I was ready to be back, I was ready to start back and I wasn’t anxious, other than the fact that I was ready to start as soon as I could. As I told a friend, one of my main memories from doing T-Town Round 2 back in 2012 was showing up to a class and not being able to sit in a desk facing right towards the teacher because I’d put on so much weight due to my depression plight. That I had to sit at an angle, and all I thought was how I was being judged by all the other students. Good news to report that I can now properly sit in a desk and a table and am not subject to my peer’s ridicule. What else has happened though? I had maintenance workers unlock my door which I didn’t even know they had a key to and subject them to me in my underwear. I’ve been woken up by fire alarms at 7:30 AM on a Sunday and then subjected myself to freezing because I had no idea it was in the low 30s and I was just wearing shorts. I’ve actually gone to the gym so that’s nice. I’ve actually bought and eaten kale and realized that yes, I still have no idea how to cook it and it tastes like chewing rubber with a worst taste. I bought a pillow. Okay, now that’s getting a little less and less interesting. However, I do remember when I returned home from being abroad and I had decided that yes, I do want to finish my schooling because having a piece of paper in something is better than not having one at all. I remember saying I want to go to anywhere except Alabama. That I loved the place but I thought my time there was done and I had to move on elsewhere. Granted when you have a piss poor GPA it kind of limits your options so here I am back here again. I just say that because even in the past couple of months my way of thinking has changed. I don’t know if it was because I realized I’d have to go to Alabama but I started to get excited about going back to Alabama. Because I did remember the good memories, I remembered the brilliant minds I met and the great times I had. I remembered that I was so passionate about something as silly as a football team that I got my body tattooed in honor of them. Which is why I’m glad I feel how I feel now because as I said, I’m excited to be here. I’m happy to be here. I feel like I belong here. Which I never thought I would feel again. Sure, I might have like a total of one friend in the Tuscaloosa area and he’s related to me but still. I can make more friends! I came to Alabama knowing no one and some of the best people I know are from here. I’m just happy to be happy. Sure, as I said, it’s been ten days. There’s plenty of time to change my mind and regret this. But I don’t think that’s going to happen. Most likely I’ll be here for two years or so. Two years of enjoyable fun knowledge gaining times. I do not like how that sentence looks at all but I’m not going to fix it because Alabama is great. Does that even make sense? Who cares, I’ve written over 800 words now. I ain’t perfect, I’m just typing scattered thoughts. I just want everyone to know I’m here at Alabama, I’m excited to actually be at Alabama, and here’s hoping that third time’s the charm. T-Town never down. Hank always up? Doesn’t have the same ring to it. So it goes.

Or doughnuts. But everyone knows if you type it “doughnuts” then you’re dumb and no one wants to be friends with you. That’s not a personal opinion. That’s a fact. You can ask anyone. Seriously, I did. I don’t write these posts without backing up my sources. Feel free to check out my bibliography that I’ll post whenever this blog ends. It’s hundred of pages already. Wow, I’d forgotten how writing these blog posts go. I just start with an idea and then start rambling and post whatever pours out onto the page. Let’s not get off track though, the topic here is donuts. I consider myself a baker. I consider myself a baker because I made a cake a couple weeks ago and I thought it tasted pretty good so in my mind I’m a baker. I want to make it clear that baking a cake is easy peasy. Making donuts is like thwarting a bear in hand to hand combat. Now bear (no pun intended) with me as I turn donut making into a metaphor for life. Uh…third time’s the charm? When one is faced with an obstacle you must overcome it and keep trying to make the perfect dough? Yeast is the devil? One of those probably applies to someone. I mainly just wanted to write this to document that it happened. That my good buddy Chris and I spent around ten hours attempting to make 25 donuts. That during my final week in Florida, I spent an entire day going back and forth to a grocery store because we had no idea that we killing yeast cells and thus destroying our chances of even coming close to something resembling dough. Should I write a post about 2016 and going back to Alabama and my future with that? Yeah, I probably should. Yeah, I probably will. Until then though, I want everyone to know that Chris and I made damn delicious donuts and Dunkin’ Donuts and Krispy Kreme can go to hell. They will never compare with us and they will never compete with us. They mainly won’t compete with us because we’ll never be a national donut chain but if we were, we’d be better. If one is to take anything from this post, I’d have it be this. If you’re going to watch an episode of Good Eats and take inspiration from it to make something then you should make sure you can find that episode on YouTube or Netflix or you have it recorded on your DVR. When you end up watching some random kid named Johnny make donuts with his magical powers it just isn’t the same. How did he make that dough just magically form in five minutes? WHAT THE HELL KIND OF DEAL WITH THE DEVIL DID YOU MAKE JOHNNY?! It’s okay though. In the end it all worked out. 10 hours and 3 batches of doughnuts later (with two being botches) we had donuts. We had delicious donuts. I know I’ve already said that a couple time but they were good. I ate five of them. My stomach really hurt and I might be sweating out sugar but like, it was delicious and I might have actually eaten five and a half. I’m a baker now. Chris Shade is a baker. We’re bakers. Donuts are great. Represent.

This is a weird blog post to write. Especially weird because I’m writing it more than a month after I got home and for no reason in particular. I thought of it and I figured I might as well write it down because I’ve been quite behind in keeping up to date with this thing. I was going to write a whole post about how I did 95 posts and I was so close to 100 and I wasn’t going to quit until I reached that quota but then I thought who cares? I’m not writing this for anyone other than myself so I might as well just update it when the words come to me. I’m not sure if this is because the water bottle I’m trying to drink is frozen or for another reason, but I figured I might as well comment on this. Friendship. We’ve all had it, we all have friends. When I was abroad, I’d say the average person stayed for two weeks. Maybe three weeks if I was lucky. Sure, there were people who stayed longer but I somehow managed to show up at the end of their tour or at the very beginning when I was about to leave. I think the longest I ever spent with a person was five weeks and that still didn’t even feel that long compared to some of the relationships I even made in a shorter period. I mention this, I write this, because I think of people like Kyle. Kyle may or may not know that he was my favorite person on the trip. He was the favorite person on the trip that I knew for two weeks in my first six weeks of being abroad for over twenty seven weeks. I write this blog because friendship is so weird to me. It’s weird to know that a guy I met in December of last year could have such a lasting impact on me when he was only there for two weeks and then went back to his friends in Normal, Illinois. I’m not saying his friends back there weren’t great or weren’t amazing people he knew for years, but I wonder, I worry that he won’t ever know how much he did for me, or how much he impacted me in those couple of weeks. I’m not going to focus just on Kyle though. Sarah, Hannah, Tali, Becky, Lindsay, David, Sophie, Manal, it’s strange how I only spent so few weeks with all of you and I still think of you to this day. I say this because it’s like, people would come for a couple of weeks and then leave and go back to their lives. That they might remember that one shy, awkward kid who finally started to open up as they left but they probably forgot about me just a couple weeks back into their normal routine. I feel strange knowing that I thought about specific people for my entire seven month journey wishing they were back or could replace certain people that came to be. It’s like, I loved those people and I feel creepy for saying it but they really were amazing people and I never know if they’ll know how truly they like, impacted my life. They might have thought they were there for their own personal reasons, to help and to grow as a person, and they’ll never know the effect they had on a random guy who didn’t say much. I just wanted to post this and say I thank you. I thank you everyone for what you did for me and how you made me feel. Especially now that I’m back home and with people I love but there aren’t any new people. It’s the same (great) people I’ve had in my life for years but I miss those new faces. Because with every new crew that came in, I was wondering am I going to find my next best friend? Sometimes I did, or sometimes I thought I did. Obviously I didn’t say that out loud because I didn’t want to seem like a weirdo. I just met some great people. I miss meeting great people. And I want to thank you all for being great people. So it goes.

I know that something is goin’ on in my head when I begin to watch Glee music videos and start to tear up. Which I then follow up with more sad songs about, well, a variety of things. I planned on writing a post earlier but I couldn’t. I don’t think I can write a very good one now. It’s just because like I said when I left, it’s weird. I’m not sure how to feel, I’m not sure how I’m going to feel. I keep wondering how I’ll even react when I see my friends and family again. Will it be a surge of emotions or will I just hug them like nothing is different. Am I in shock right now or I am just not emotional enough? It’s strange. I know I’m leaving in but a few hours. I know I’ll be home by this time tomorrow night. I can’t comprehend that. I haven’t seen the USA in such a long time, let alone home. I want to write more. I want to feel more. I think I’m in a state of shock. Because I know it’s happening and my brain just can’t decide how to feel. I’m excited, I’m sad, I’m ready, I’m so many things. I just know I’m going to the airport and then I’m flying to Boston and then I’m going home. To see my cats. I miss those cats. It’s been a wild ride. It’s been a helluva ride. Except all rides have to come to an end. I had hoped I would come out of this a better man and I’m pretty damn sure I did. I’m happy. That’s what counts. I’ll try to write something better and wordier and deeper in the coming days. Until then, Hank’s back in America baby! So it goes.

Y’all thought the blog was dead didn’t ya. You thought I’d found true love and decided I would end this and ride off into the sunset. Well you were wrong. I’m still here and writing as much as ever. I definitely don’t think I can actually say as much as ever when I’ve written about one post in the last two weeks but just go with me here. I’m proud to say that I actually did stuff in Iceland. Compared to Ireland being let’s see how many pubs I can hit and let’s see how late I can stay up in the night talking to a cute girl, I managed to actually see things in Iceland. It did help that I got to meet up with my cousin Sara and her friend, and oh wait, her friend as well instead of being up to my own devices to actually plan things to do. Because I do seem to suffer when I’m in charge of doing that by my lonesome. We all know the old saying that goes Iceland is actually green and Greenland is actually icy. And if you don’t know that well now you do. That may very well be true, I think Iceland has some of the most beautiful natural beauty of anywhere I’ve visited but I’d still like to think it’s pretty damn icy. In July. If Greenland isn’t green and is just icy then I have no idea why anyone would ever want to visit “the world’s biggest island.” It could be because my cousin is from California and I’m from Florida but we just aren’t very well suited for the cold. Or maybe we just aren’t suited for wind. I’ll also admit that I knew next to nothing about Iceland. I knew that stupid Greenland quote, Bjork was from here, Sigur Ros (who gave me desert visions) came from here, and that I used to be friends with a girl who swam for them in the Olympics. I researched it for about another hour or so before I came to get me fully up to speed which meant that I knew it was apparently a safe place and that they spoke English. I didn’t know much more, I didn’t have many expectations other than I’d get a chance to see my cousin again. They say cousins who freeze together, bond together and that we did. Who is this they that I speak of? They don’t want you to know. They just reveal their secrets to me because they can trust me because they know I’ll write their words out beautifully and eloquently. I just feel that Iceland was another one of those loss for words types of places. I actually managed to start taking photos again and I was never very satisfied with them. Because a simple photo just can’t convey the majesty that is Iceland. The entire country is only around 300 thousand people and you can tell. You can tell because it doesn’t look like some over developed crap hole. It’s just a beautiful island that has volcanos, that has snow capped mountains, that has beaches, that has waterfalls, that has super attractive Scandinavian people, that has bars that never seem to close on weekends. When I’m writing these things, I always start out in a flurry of words and bust out a few hundo then slow down to a crawl. Then try to listen to things to inspire me, then realize I can’t listen and write things and the same time, before ultimately thinking I’ve barely said anything of substance but I’ve already written over six hundred words and that I need to put up some decent things before everyone gets too bored. It’s a complicated process to be me. I’ve experienced the hot springs of Iceland, I’ve experienced black sandy beaches, and I’ve experienced asian noodles more times than I can count (okay, four times). If I had written this is in a more timely manner things might be different because now I’m just realizing that I totally left out the whole story of ripping my pants in a bar while doing the limbo, followed by the next night have a drunk girl casually throw knives around (horribly, I might add) after she peed on a curb. There have been nights where I walked around the whole night in a sarong, and there have been other nights where I was driven around till six in the morning on a quest for a hot dog. Iceland has been a pretty crazy experience and it never gets dark! Those two thoughts don’t really go together at all but I forgot to mention that one too. Apparently in the winter it never gets light and in the summer it never gets dark. Which messes with your head, it messes with your head when it’s one am and you’re going out to the bar and it’s bright out and you’re thinking that it’s early and then you finish at 5 AM and it’s even brighter and it’s a trip. I feel like I have so many individual stories to tell but to lump them all together here wouldn’t do them justice. I should have blogged more about them, but with Iceland I was always doing something. Except today essentially. I was always going on eight or ten hour tours, then coming back, and going out again to visit the night life. It was an exhausting process but it was a fun one. And now, now I’m just sitting around and letting it finally sink in because this is my last day here. Do I have any plans today? No, not entirely but I imagine I’ll do something. Something more than just cleaning my clothes I hope. Either way, I’ve entirely enjoyed Iceland, I think it’s a beautiful place and I’m glad I saw a good chunk of it. Or as much as I could. Jeez, I didn’t even write about the penis museum. See, if you want to know more about Iceland just ask me. There’s so many things that I’ve already done and seen that I can’t even list them all off. Shark! Like shark. Eating shark. Eating toxic, I don’t have kidneys so I have to pee out of my skin, shark. Now I’m regretting that I didn’t include a daily post of my adventures here. Especially compared to Ireland, though I had my own adventures there and was more focused on the romance anyway. I just did so much stuff here. I did so much stuff and this blog post doesn’t do it justice. Just like the photos won’t do the nature justice. That’s just what happens sometimes though, and if people want to know more they should just ask. And hopefully I’ll have some good stories to tell. Oh yeah, last thing I should add is that I’ll post at least one more post here today trying to chronicle my feelings on finally going home after over seven months abroad. Also, since at least one person asked, I will be continuing this blog once I return to Florida. At least a couple of times. My fans need it. So it goes.

As I walked around today, I thought of many ways to formulate this blog post. Should I go with the super cocky persona that I sometimes give off? Should I go with the cheesy, sappy, romantic persona that is who I truly am inside? Or should I just be a total weirdo and combine a lot of genres into one and hope it works? I think I’m going to go with that one. I’m just saying that I know my dear readers who have latched onto my adventures and are living vicariously through me probably think that I am a total ladies man. I know I seem like a modern day James Bond (who is actually still modern because there are new movies coming out about him and that is a horrible analogy). The truth is that I’m probably not as smooth as you may think I am. That I do not have hundreds of trysts with local women that I’ve found throughout my travels. That for the most part, okay the entire part, that I’ve essentially been entirely alone on this trip. In a romantic sense. I mean, I’ve met people, made (hopefully) life long friendships and things like that. Oh crap, I could still totally write a sentence about what I’m about to say and put it in the beginning of this post because that’s what I intended but I’m not going to. Because as I’ve said before, I admit my flaws. Just wanted to say that this is not a review of Aziz Ansari’s book, Modern Romance, which came out last month. Though if anyone wants to talk about, I did read it all and I’m totally open to sharing my thoughts on it. This is just my take on romance. And by romance, I mean one specific girl so there’s a good chance I change this blog title before I’m even done. Except for that I can’t because I included this blurb about Modern Romance so now if I change the title that will make no sense and…wow, I’ve done a very good job of rambling through almost four hundred words before I even wanted to say what I came here to say.

An Ode to Effy: Alright, alright, alright, one last mention of Modern Romance the book so it looks like I actually will include it as the title of this blog. He mentioned that now in the year 2015, online dating is the most prevalent reason for relationships. That more relationships come from it than anything else and that’s like a 30% increase (while everything else decreased) in the last decade alone. Throughout my time abroad, I’ve viewed people through online dating websites just to get a sense of how other cultures use the internet for dating purposes really. I say that because I would message a person or two but I would never really expect to interact with someone because of the program of which I was staying in, the language barrier, etc, etc. During my one week stint in Madrid, I did talk to a girl for a little bit and then off I went to Morocco. Randomly while in Morocco, I decided to message her again because I noticed I had never responded to her or something like that. We got to talking and talking let to Skyping and that led to video chats and that led to more and more communication. I talked to her because I enjoyed talking to her but I never expected anything to come about it especially because I had no plans to return to Spain post Morocco life. I did mention that I was going to Ireland though and she promptly told me how she had visited it and how she had hated it. Even though it wasn’t a glowing recommendation, I still was already booked and excited to have my holiday there.  There were a couple of moments where she spoke of coming to Ireland as well so we could finally meet and I went back on forth on the issue but in the end, my final week in Morocco we never spoke of Ireland so I figured the idea had been put to rest. What I’m going to say next may surprise you. Just like apparently there’s stigma with online dating and people are ashamed to say how they use it (which they shouldn’t since everyone uses it now), there is a stigma attached to mental health issues as well. Sometimes I tell people I struggled with depression, sometimes I tell people I just had some issues come up. I mention this because I might not be as confident as you, my dear readers, think I am. I struggle with depression, I struggle with anxiety, and I remember how I reacted when this girl told me she was coming to Ireland. I had a panic attack. I started sweating, I started pacing around my room, I started banging my head into the wall, and I didn’t know what to do. I am an insecure man. This trip has surely helped me become a stronger, more confident, more self assured guy, but I’m still a guy that utterly despised himself just a couple of years ago. The thought of a beautiful Spanish girl spending her own money to meet a guy she’d video chatted a few times for a couple weeks was utterly terrifying and I was scared. I was scared because I didn’t want her to come here and to think she wasted her time. Or money. I would be the first to call myself weird and different and not everyone’s cup of tea. Which is why I was glad we didn’t talk of it my final week in Morocco. Because I thought if we didn’t speak of it that it wouldn’t actually happen. Because that’s how I thought about a lot of things while dealing with depression. I say this because I’m probably going to ramble further about my struggles with romance and depression. I never liked that the catalyst for the start of my depression had to do with a break up five years ago. Looking back, obviously there were more factors at play than that, but at the time and for quite a while afterwards I blamed it strictly on things dealing with romance. Which is what probably led me to such a skewed perception of it. Or maybe not a skewed perception of it, but a feeling of utter terror regarding it and feeling that it was something that I wasn’t deserving of. I have had a relationships since then but I never really felt like I had so many years ago. I always felt that I was going through the motions rather than pouring my heart into it. And I felt that that was all I could do. That a piece of my heart died and wasn’t going to come back. Many times on this trip I’ve thought, well I think I could survive on my own and tolerate it. I accepted that maybe love isn’t something for me and I was coming to terms with it. All in all, that’s kind of a shit feeling and I feel I should rather celebrate that I began to enjoy myself one on one and not have to correlate that with romance. Just because I was finally liking myself doesn’t mean that I would be the only to ever like me. But I can’t always help that I think in extremes and those extremes tend to be negative and that’s stupid. I will admit that’s stupid. Long story short, she came to Ireland. She came to Ireland and erupted inside of me a flood of feelings that had laid dormant for years and that I thought were extinct. She brought me a sense of happiness that I didn’t think another person could elicit from me. In just our five or six days together, I didn’t fall in love because that would be entirely too soon, but I felt the potential to fall in love. I felt the first seeds of that sprouting inside of my heart. Oh gosh, this is getting sappy. If people asked about all the sights I saw in Ireland, I’ll say that I spent a lot of my time walking around with a girl and talking to her and eating pizza. That maybe I didn’t see castles or the countryside, but I got to stare into the big brown eyes of a girl and think I’m very lucky to be in this situation. I got to sit outside and sing Backstreet Boy’s with a girl while both people and birds ran away from us because they thought we were weird. I got to spend an entire week, not thinking how do I get this girl drunk and into her pants but thinking how do I think of a reason to hold this girl’s hand. I also got to remind myself how emotional of a guy I can be. A guy that after walking twenty minutes in the rain to get pizza sat at a grimy table and tried to conceal his eyes tearing up because he was going to miss this girl so much when he left the next day. A guy that felt like an utter asshole when he managed to screw up waking up to see her one last time before she left back to Spain. A guy that realizes it’s extremely unrealistic to ever see her again but the romantic inside of him thinks that somehow it’ll happen. A guy that also apparently sucks so badly at Spanish that he was told that she would learn better English because I’m worthless with her language. Also a guy who is so thankful that he didn’t screw up this amazing week by convincing her not to come because he was scared of meeting her. That he was scared of not being good enough for her even after she gave him no reason to think that way. I just want Effy to know that she’s amazing and I want everyone else to know that I think so too. She’s also amazing because she managed to put up with hanging out with me all day and night and never complaining when I was the weird guy that y’all know I love. I had just forgotten how good it feels to like a cute girl and to just get to know someone who’s just simply super cool. Seriously though, if I had convinced her to not come here that would have been one of the biggest mistakes of my life. Even though I probably wouldn’t ever entirely realize that but that’s not the point. The point is that she came here, the point is that I feel blessed entirely that we got to spend this time together, and that somehow I will see her again. I mean I have to right? She came on a whim to meet a random guy from the internet in a different country where she doesn’t even speak the same language. Or she does speak English, but she’s traveling alone, it’s not her first language and that’s brave. It’s brave, it’s risky, and I’m just thankful she did it. I’m thankful for her, I’m so happy to have met her, to have been around her, and I know I keep using those words but I can’t stop myself. Because she truly is a gem. Maybe I’m just whipped up in the passionate feelings I have, but I do truly think that if I had spent more time with her, I would just keep thinking these things except more so. That she would get better and better and better and I would be me who we all know is oh so great. I didn’t expect to find love on this trip and I’m not saying I did but I found something special. She is special. And I will see her again somehow, somewhere, because I have to. Because I don’t want to live in a world where my last interaction with her was walking her to her door at almost five AM and saying I would see her in a couple of hours to tell her goodbye one last time. Actually, even if I had said goodbye to her I would have to see her again because like I said she’s special. She’s special and I have written far too much. I feel my longest blog post about traveling the world is of course about a girl. Whatever, she deserves it. She earned it. She’s one of a kind. Es mejor. I’m going to stop now because I don’t know how many people care about me pouring my heart about someone. It’s my blog though and I do what I want. Effy, it was truly a pleasure, I hope you read this, and I hope you felt half the things I felt about you. I could live with half, even a quarter, that you didn’t forgot to forget about me when you left even though you promised you would was enough for me. I would write a last line in Spanish but I know I would just mess it up. That’s me. That’s the guy you totally fell for. Because why not? I’m awesome. So it goes.

As I sit in the empty hotel room, digesting the first ham I’ve had in over two months, I feel lucky just to have made it to Ireland. Compared to most methods of transportation, flying is supposed to be one of the safest out there but it sure doesn’t mean it isn’t a bitch sometimes. Or all the time. In regards to my trip, I’ve had complications due to airports in just about every single country that I’ve arrived in. Not getting luggage in one country, not getting onto my second flight in another country, possibly being under threat by ISIS in one country, the drama never seems to end. Which is fine. When you make it to your destination. I mean, I’m not really stressing it in the heat of the moment either, I’m just worrying about not peeing my pants. That’s mainly what I was going through yesterday. Along with thinking, “Man, I bet people would be a lot calmer if this guy would stop screaming orders at us at the top of his lungs in French.” Oh, right, the language barrier. Nothing is worse about not knowing a language than being at a foreign airport where a man is screaming at you while they’re evacuating the terminal and you’re trying not to wee in your pants. Varying reports were heard like a man was being chased after by the police and slipped into the airport crowd in order to blend in along with the aforementioned ISIS bomb threat scenario. Either way, it was a bit of a shit show. Just a crowd of people being herded around throughout Paris with me blindly following the crowd and hoping it would all work out in the end. It did at least. I got to eat bacon. Or some type of ham. If you make it out alive, you should always eat ham. Especially after being in a Muslim country where there is no ham. I post this because I remember when they were calling specifically for people going to Boston or Singapore (both two wildly different locations yet connected yesterday) I thought that I should just do whatever I could to get on that flight to Boston instead. I reasoned that I sure, I would love to see Ireland and Iceland but I’d also sure love to not have to deal with all this traveling drama and just be somewhere stable for awhile. Obviously, I didn’t do that and I’m happy I didn’t. I got my luggage, I got to my hotel, I got to my room, and in twenty minutes or so I’ll be zooming over to my hostel where I’ll be staying for the next nine nights. I’m happy to be in Ireland, just like I’ve been happy to end up wherever I’m going every single time. I just wish the process wouldn’t be so damn stressful. Though really I can’t complain too much because it’s true that I’ve always ended up at my destination safe and sound. Even if it was hours or days later, I always arrive and I always am happy that I did do so. As of yet, I’m not able to confirm or deny if Irish folk actually speak English but I guess that’s something I’ll be trying to decipher for the rest of my stay here. Enjoy this post fans because the drinks will start flowing soon enough and the words will be scrambled. Maybe I’ll get more entertaining, maybe I’ll perfect the art of slur. Cheers. So it goes.

I was thinking about using a different title for this but since my original blog post was Leaving is weird, I figured I might as well end the main leg of my journey with another homage to that. Because I’m practically done. Sure, I’m going to Ireland and Iceland for the next fifteen days or so but I’m pretty much done. In a few days I’ll have been gone for seven months and I never thought this trip would actually ever end. Time is weird man. Like, I’ve gone through some long days and longer weeks yet looking back now it seems that the time literally flew right by me. Maybe I’ll write a longer post about all this from the comfort of my hotel bed in Ireland tonight or maybe I won’t. I feel like I’m in shock yet again. I know it’s over except I don’t know how to process it. I’ll be leaving a country I spent over two months in with people that I’ve grown to love and care for to going to a country where I’m going to finally be able to drink lots. I’ve just been so used to this volunteering lifestyle, and this constant flux of new people in it and out, and this somewhat routine based schedule and now it’s all over and I don’t know what’s happening next. I don’t even know what’s going to happen in this next sentence. I feel I had all these ideas that just dissipated from my mind the moment I started typing the actual words out. All I know is that it’s crazy for this to be nearing the end. Or like I said, this basically is the end. I’m going to a couple more countries because I’m in the area and I just want to sightsee and keep traveling while I can. But I’m done, I’m done with what I signed up to do. Which is crazy! I know I’m all the better for it and I know I’ll be thanking myself and my family for years to come for supporting me and my desire to do this. It’s sad but it’s happy. It’s so many emotions. Yes, I know I just said it’s so many emotions and that I only said two. I just didn’t feel I had to list all of them, okay? I really thought I would have over one thousand words here and I’m just struggling to hit four hundred. All I know is that I’ve loved my time, I’ve loved my experiences, and I wouldn’t change it for the world. Would I change some things that I did or said? Of course because that’s what we all would do. I’m just glad I did this, I’m glad what’s going to happen because I did this and I’m glad that marriage equality extends to everyone. Hopefully, I’ll go into a little more depth about my thoughts and experiences but even if I don’t, I’ve written enough blog posts already for people to understand where I’m coming from. I’ll be boarding a plane for Dublin in around two hours and I’m just excited to enjoy my last couple of weeks abroad. I don’t know what else to say and I’m okay with that. It’s All Crazy! It’s All False! It’s All a Dream! It’s Alright. That album title made a lot more sense when I only remembered a couple of words from it. I’m sticking with it anyway. So it goes.