For the Last month, I’ve been craving adventure.  For too long, I’ve been cloistered in this big old house, working 10 to 15 hour days, researching this damn sex book.  I wake up, I eat breakfast, I read about swingers clubs and gay saunas for a few hours, I eat lunch, and then I research prices and locations for prostitution. I eat dinner while scouring sex forums for mentions of full service massage parlors.  Atlanta, San Francisco, Montreal, Vancouver, Belize, Costa Rica – It’s nonstop sex and travel and sex and travel…

And that used to be my real life, you know – sex and travel.  That was the JustinWasHere experience.  The good old days of life on the road – cheap booze and promiscuity.  I lived that life, and I suppose that is what qualifies me to write this book, but right now it has become such an unwieldy goddamn albatross that I wish I never shot it.

It’s good for me though.  A major project, and if the publisher holds true to his word, it will net me a nice chunk of travel money in the end, and hopefully some future opportunities.  All this will, I hope, allow me to go back to that old life of sun and sex and adventure.  The good life, and I swear I had it in my grasp once upon a time.

I suppose we’re all looking for that life, at least on some level.  The human spirit screams for adventure and cons our feeble bodies into climbing mountains and crossing oceans in the name of exploration or destiny.  It’s an ego thing, I’m sure; this urge of the wandering man to spread his seed and conquer the world. I like to think that it’s just a part of human nature – that we all have this animal inside us, scratching at our frontal lobes and forcing us to make reckless choices.

The beast in some of us is stronger than in others.  Some are able tame that beast and build real lives out of building blocks of girlfriends and 9 to 5 jobs.  They open savings accounts and buy houses.  And we envy their ability to do these things.

I’m sure I’ll figure it out some day.  I’ll hang up my backpack for good, and stop dreaming of the good old days.  I’ll someday stop clawing through old photos and looking for whatever it is that I think is missing in my life.  I’ll figure it out and settle down and stop being broke and unsatisfied.  I just hope the secret to life isn’t blind complacency.

So for now, I’ll enjoy the ride – I’ll bide my time until the next adventure presents itself and I’ll satiate the beast inside me with little morsels of mini adventures like hikes and day trips.

On Friday, I’m heading down to Los Angeles to catch up with some of the old So Cal crew.  I haven’t been to LA since I first came back from Australia, so it will be nice to see some old friends, and party like a Hollywood rockstar again.  After that I’m going to spend a few days in San Diego and cross the border into Mexico to get a root canal.

That’s right, folks.  The next big adventure on the horizon is a Mexican root canal!  They are about a third of the price in Tijuana, and for a broke nomad with a sore tooth, that’s a good enough reason to risk sup-standard work and an accidental viewing of the donkey show.

So, wish me luck folks! I may return psychologically damaged, or missing a kidney, but at least this damn tooth will stop hurting.