Pre-Departure

Disclaimer.

So I've decided to create a "blog". I think blog is just a cool, 2009-friendly way of saying "diary", which makes me feel weird, because it might be weird if I kept a diary. I usually pictured people with diaries as the type of people who have alot of secrets that they are afraid to tell their friends or something. I don't have any secrets and this is a public diary, so now I understand what a blog is I suppose. It's simply just a very public journal of all my most private and intimate experiences and ideas...
...Well, Doug kept a journal and nobody had the stones to make fun of him...although he was pretty secretive about it. Regardless this is my blog.

I'm really writing this to document my time in London. As an English major guy, I know I should be writing with my audience in mind, but I'm mainly going to write this for myself so I can explicitly remember my trip abroad for the rest of my life. So if things seemed jarred or rambled at times, it's because I don't care.

I'm also writing this so my friends and family can see how I'm doing, read about my experiences, see some pictures, and sadly see what's going on inside my head as I rummage the world and try and figure out if there really is life outside of Old Bridge, New Jersey.

Ok, this next part isn't for you, it's for me. Like I said I want to remember every detail of this trip and the way I'm feeling before/after leaving like 20 years from now.

I am twenty years old about to turn twenty one in a week. After a three year booze-filled romp through a psuedo-college, psuedo labor force lifestyle I have decided I want to see the world before the world sees me. My trip to London began in my humble apartment in Franklin Street. I moved in with my beatnik brother ( I'll call Justin my brother, because I had the audacity to live with him and he with me) and unknowingly had the mat of every belief I've ever held ripped out from under me. Living in a depressing apartment with depressing neighbors (sorry neighbours) and a roomate who is a living homage to every philosopher that ever lived changed everything about the way I percieve the world, or, how the world sees me. I spent 9 months living with no television, small, sputtery blots of internet that came in waves of ten minutes, no mainstream movies, no Ipod, and no entertainment, except the long, coffee-fueled conversations I had with Justin about religion, art, life , God, Being, Nothingness, and Amstel Light. I spent nine months eating rice and tortilla chips, and figuring out that happiness/entertainment can only be found for me in a good conversation.I could only figure out who I was in an empty room.
On this exact day last year I was 30 pounds heavier, notably unhappy, and beginning my career as a red hawk. I was going to enter MSU's teaching program and graduate, be a teacher, move in with my then girlfriend, wait for the screaming kids and the white-pickett fence and potentially die.
After my first four months in Franklin street. I lost 20 pounds, separated from my girlfriend, dropped my teaching major, devoted all my writing to my band, and began my first plans to leave the country. My trip to London is my first effort in what I hope will be a lifetime of existential traveler's bliss. I know You don't have to go anywhere to travel except a small apartment, or a coffee shop with your friend, all movement is traveling to me, just taking the time to not let a single tree pass by the rear window without commenting on it. I hope London enables me to continue to grow outside of the box I've created for myself at home, and the box I see outside of away at school. I hope this trip allows me to drop the "American way". I want to see myself outside of the American societal construct, or how all my pre-concieved, pre-determined, notions of right and wrong match up against an entirely different societal current( I know, if you go to MSU, holla Bob Whitney), This is deconstructionism though, post-colonial deconstruction starting right now with my soul.

I think I'll post one more real pre-depature blog before I go.

Cheers-
Andrew.