Day Twenty-Six – What Am I Excited About?

As I sit here on the Ides of March wondering how to start this post, I am reflecting on things I have been excited about in my life.  There are the small things, like being excited about finding money in your pants pocket when swapping out your clothes between seasons.  If it is a significant amount, then I usually get mad at myself because how could I not know I was missing that much money…unless of course alcohol or gambling was involved.  I get excited when I get tickets to an event I want to attend.  I also get excited over a new pack of colored pencils or brush markers.

I get excited when I discover the perfect writing pen which for me right now is the Papermate Inkjoy Gel 0.7 in every color of the rainbow.  Excitement is an understatement when I talk about boarding the plane when I moved to Paris.  I felt excitement shooting an AK-47 for the first time.  I always get excited when I am watching a movie and one of the scenes takes place somewhere I have been.

It reminds me of my dad’s excitement when we were young and would drive by a house he had built and he had to point it out to us.  I am excited when I meet family or friends in places around the world that I have been to and can show them around.  Excitement is planning a trip.  Who hasn’t gotten excited over finding a pair of perfectly fitting jeans?  I know many people find her underwhelming, but my heart skipped a beat seeing Mona Lisa for the first time.  I remember the excitement of my first trip to Europe.  Sometimes I get excited waking up and seeing the sun shining.

I have a photo on my phone that says, “Excitement is a mixture of enthusiasm, motivation, intuition, and a hint of creativity.” I am definitely enthusiastic about and motivated to accomplish what I am currently most excited about.  I may have to trust my intuition and it could at times take some creativity to pull off.  I am currently most excited to be preparing to close the current chapter of my life and open the next into lands unknown.

I have enjoyed every minute of my life in Poland, but it is time for me to start to close that chapter.  I am excited to say that I am finishing out this semester of the school year.  After that, I will most likely head to Bulgaria for the summer.  When I return to Warsaw, I will start to eliminate all the stuff I have accumulated over the last four years.  Then the excitement will start to build.

I am excited to learn about cultures I know very little about.  Although I have been to Romania, I am considering leaving Poland for Romania and then into and across Türkiye and hitting the “Silk Road”.   The Silk Road was a network of Eurasian trade routes active from the second century BC until the mid-15th century.  Spanning over 6,400 kilometers (4,000 miles), it played a central role in facilitating economic, cultural, political, and religious interactions between the East and West. The name “Silk Road”, first coined in the late 19th century, has fallen into disuse among some modern historians in favor of Silk Routes, because it more accurately describes the intricate web of land and sea routes connecting Central, East, South, Southeast, and West Asia as well as East Africa and Southern Europe.  Some modern-day cities on the Silk Route are Istanbul, Turkey; Tbilisi, Georgia; Sheki, Azerbaijan; Samarkand, Uzbekistan; Shiraz, Iran; Dunhuang, China; Karimabad, Pakistan; Baku, Azerbaijan; Almaty, Kazakhstan; Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, Bhaktapur, Nepal; Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia; Xi’an, China; Bukhara, Uzbekistan; Nara, Japan; Gyeongju, South Korea; Jaisalmer, India; Leh, India; Yazd, Iran; and Yerevan, Armenia.

Istanbul, which I visited last year, is considered the end of the Silk Route.  I was excited to learn that two cities in Azerbaijan are on this list because a major part of my plan is to visit this country.  After all, it is the home of my two flatmates.  Other countries I am considering visiting are Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, and India. I know it will be challenging at times between language barriers (Thank God for Google Translate), transportation across borders, and Visa restrictions, but that’s all part of the excitement.