The Middle of Nowhere--and Everything That Comes With It

If this sounds like it's being written by a befuddled, jetlagged man... well, it is.

I got back from Australia a couple of days ago and feel dazed, to say the least. I felt like I was living on the edge of the earth for 2 weeks--which, I guess is partially true, since I was literally in the middle of South Australia, hundreds of kilometers from any major city, trying to balance my job with simply being one of the people on this press trip. I am not sure it succeeded necessarily. But that's something probably best left off my blog and for another time.

There were definite highlights, though:

1. Cruising the Murray River on boats of all sorts in the stark, oddly beautiful Riverland area.



This included some threatening thunderstorms that seemed to follow us daily.



2. The Gawler Ranges.

This was a stunning landscape of rolling hills with salt lakes--as you can see from the pics I got of others on the trip and me on this insane exapnse of white, which apparently astronauts can spot very clearly from space (probably because there is NO ozone layer here)






The camp we stayed at was solar powered, collected rainwater for showers, and was run by Geoff Sholz, a guy who knew exactly what he was doing when building tents in the Bush, as the Aussies like to say. It was set among white sand and gum trees and was as silent a place I'd been in years. Just beautiful.



The camp also beckoned some kangaroos--just two of the dozens we saw.




3. The West Coast of the Eyre Peninsula, where the Indian Ocean is uninterrupted until you hit South Africa.





And the obligatory shot of me in flip flops....





4. Kangaroo Island: Beautiful beaches, koalas, and more stunning scenery. We literally got within a few feet of some koalas and wallabies. They didn't seem to care that we were there at all.




And this final shot is a view from one of the houses we stayed at for our last night on Kangaroo Island. Not too bad, eh?



Coming back to L.A. was a bit anti-climactic--going into the office to simply get ready to do a trip to New York in 3 days for another client, and really questioning, once again, what I am doing. It's been keeping me up many nights already. I suspect everyone in their 30s wrings his or her hands about what one should be doing in life. These questions of "What is my purpose?" "What am I passionate about?" "What really matters to me?" All of that has been going through my head rapidly. Having several nights on the other side of the world to think about it makes it feel more intense too. I did this last year when I wen to Melbourne and came home to realize that Wayne and I really should no longer be boyfriends if we wanted to remain in each others lives.

I am thankful I have had these opportunities to travel and have a few moments to step back to see what my life looks like. But the vision is not always as beautiful as these pictures. That's OK. Images of what you experience are one thing; how those experiences influence your decisions for the future is something else entirely.