Dreaming of daydreaming has filled my days and nights lately. Total wanderlust withdrawal I call it. My feet have begun to itch incessantly and the red scratch marks from my nails seem to be the only pathways I am creating or following. I wonder when I will wander again.
Apart from a short stint in Kruger it feels as though I have been cemented into place in this small, beautiful yes but still small, town I call home. 2013 turned into the year of stuck. Stuck doing mind-numbing work that threatens the written word that usually spills from my mind. Before it became to late a friend of mine, Anthony Ehlers, wrote a profound and eye-opening blog about writers who are not writing. This phrase of his became my mantra for the final months of last year and motivated my search for travel and the resulting words it creates in my heart.
“When you come back to writing, you will still posses the talent you always had. Trust yourself, it is your story, no-one else is going to tell it.” Anthony Ehlers
With a conscious effort I searched deep within, my writing mind resembled the Makgadigadi pans in the depth of winter, dry and cracked with only a mirage of creativity shimmering in the distance. Shocked, I retreated and decided to find a way to flood this once fertile landscape instead of trying to scratch the barren surface in search of something, anything. I knew what I needed. I needed an adventure. I needed some wide open spaces; koppies or mountains, rivers or streams, deserts or forests – it did not matter where it only mattered when.
When you imagine things for long enough, they say, you imagine them into reality. The answer came in the form of small virtual envelope on my screen titled: A Regional Adventure…you’re invited!
And now…I invite you to join me as I take you along on this adventure with me…a rain storm that will once again flood the plains of my mind and the words will flow.