another day in paradise.

I pulled this out of an email I sent someone today because I think that it´s a pretty good summation of where I´m at right now. But the beach is still beautiful.

Yes, I feel like I´m just on some random vacation. I am getting bored with it, even though sitting on exotic warm beautiful beaches is great, I am mostly discontent. I feel a little like I just need to get through December in Ecuador and then move on to Colombia and find somewhere to live and get a job and my own somewhere to sleep and cook which will make me feel better. It´s interesting to learn that a person can get tired of a vacation. Maybe it´s because the intention was not to go on vacation.

I am not in love with Ecuador. I´ve been trying, but it´s like dating someone that´s perfect in resume, or on paper, but there´s no spark there. And sometimes you just keep trying because you think you ought to fall in love with them? But eventually you just have to break up. I don´t know if that analogy works, but probably close enough for you to understand.

Here I am in Canoa, total paradise. The owner of the hostal has offered a work trade and one of the bar owners asked if I would stay and work for him and the only massage therapist just left town, leaving behind clients eager to pay. I´m kind of being handed a life in a town where people keep saying they will leave "tomorrow" for years at a time. Jobs that people fight for are just being offered and the more that the path opens up to me to stay here, the more clear I am about the fact that I would not be happy being a beach bum for the next five years. Even though it sounds like paradise to so many people, I just think there´s something kind of sad about this supertan, know everyone in town, where´s the next drink, dude how were the waves today, did you hear who snogged who last night, kind of life. But it helps to focus me on what I don´t want. I think that when you head out with zero plan, it must take a while to weed out a bunch of the options so that you can get closer to the heart of the desire.