About external affirmation, mercy and how I want to do things

At the time of my last post, I had an healthier perspective on social media than before but something still didn’t feel right. Not only about social media, but about more.

I thought a lot about the craving for affirmation and appreciation by others for myseld. Not only regarding social media but regarding me as a whole. I believe that because of our genes as a highly social species, we just want to appeal to others and being liked. One lonely human without it’s herd is just not that strong against all the sabre-toothed tigers etc. and because of this we have to make sure not to be alone. But things have changed a lot since the times of these sabre-toothed friends and it’s not about survival anymore (for most of the times). In the last weeks I just recognized, why I’m feeling pushed and stressed when I’m doing things: it’s mainly because I want to make it good so that others like it. Not all the time, but it seems to be oscillating more or less around what I’m doing. And if it’s not so present, I’m very easy in some kind of an flow regardless what I’m actually doing and this feeling is the best for me.

Regarding the documentation of my journey, the beautiful photos and pictures, my thoughts and feelings: I will just do it the way I want to do it in the moment I’m doing it and not think much about what others will think about it.

What is more my internet roaming doesn’t work anymore after being EU foreign countries for four months and because of that I’ve to use local sim cards and with my Greek sim card, I can’t publish reels on Instagram anymore because this feature and Instagram music are not available in all countries. Right now I don’t want to use an vpn tool for this reason only. So my favourite feature is not available anymore to me. That made me think again about being controlled, helpless and being at the mercy of these big social media platforms when using their tools. And I came to the same conclusion as last year: I don’t want to be completely dependent from these platforms. There will never be full control over stuff I’m having in the internet, but I just want a bit of it.

Because of that and because I want to write more and longer texts, I’ll post some more on this blog again, I think.

Writing this post had been really much fun and it felt free and just right. I’m loving it.

The photo just shows one of these wonderful dancing and ever changing clouds and I thought it just fits to this post.

Companionship and solitude

This journey is my first real travel or journey I’m doing on my own. Before I never did even holidays alone. I always went with a girlfriend or friends.

Now that I’m on my way for quite some weeks, I must say, that I’m feeling really good in solitude. It feels like I don’t have to care as much as before. Like if a weight got lifted from me or something. Maybe I’ve got a ‘take care of others and feel bad if they are not happy traumata’ or something.

Before I started this journey, I often thought about having some time for myself and not to look what others are needing etc. And that’s exactly what’s happening right now: at the moment I’m just doing what I want. There are no appointments or other people that are wanting something from me. And there are very few worries and other topics of friends and family that I get confronted with. Sometimes that feels really unfamiliar and sometimes I recognise, that I’m searching for the next thing I have to do or worry about. It’s like a background process running and sometimes it gets into the foreground of my mind. When this happens, I need sometime to become clear again, that there is no next thing I have to do and nothing to really worry about.

But until now I didn’t do nothing for more than an hour or so. Most of the time I’m doing something: watching and experiencing these wonderful landscapes, listening to silence, driving, eating, thinking, writing, drawing, making music, messaging or talking with friends or locals, running, biking, cleaning, working on Rosinante, buying groceries etc. In the past I thought about going to an buddhist retreat of silence where you are not allowed to take anything with you and you are not allowed to talk to others. Just meditating, eating, sleeping, repeat. I never did this because it felt somehow not right for me. I thought, that finding a place in nature and staying there for a week or so and just doing my own retreat of silence, eating, sleeping, cooking, repeat would be a better fit for me. I’m wondering if this will ever happen.

Before I started this journey, I made the plan to start this blog to keep me sane. To communicate my thoughts, feeling etc. to some one or no one, just communicating. Until now, this seems to work pretty good.

Apart from my times of solitude I meet new people here and there. Especially here in Albania it’s crazy. Everywhere are super friendly people that start talking and showing stuff etc. More about that in another post.

In Croatia I meet Tino the smart and clever electricity guy from Germany I wrote about. It’s his offroad van you are seeing in the photos of this post. We meet again in Albania and spent some days together talking about all sorts of topics: cars, electricity, offroading, life, Germany, Albania, mindfulness and everything else and we did some crazy offroading tours together in which I learned a lot. This felt absolutely great too and I had a lot if fun. So it seems, that right now I did not become a crazy solitude guy that hates other people and wants to eat them or something like that. I hope, that I will meet more such nice, smart and friendly like Tino on my journey. And I think the chances are looking quite good.