Moving the Roadblock

Over the last two years, I have repeatedly come across a roadblock in my personal development. In brief words and in sparing you the details, the roadblock was about not knowing how to cope with some events in my early past. It seems, from whichever angle I looked upon those events, they'd leave me bitter, scarred, unable to embrace life and keep me from fully becoming the person I think I am at the core of my being.

Then a friend sent me on a press trip to Texas - which turned into a transforming experience. I find this quote by George Moore, an English philosopher, to be particularly well suited:

"A man travels the world in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.”

And now, being home and in beginning to digest and process the plethora of encounters, sights, sounds, experiences which were condensed into a tight schedule of a mere 10 days of travel, I think I'm beginning to find, what it takes to move the roadblock out of the way: Acceptance of my fate, ultimately maybe forgiveness, coming from a place of GIVING the exact thing I think I'm missing. I repeatedly referred to this as the "Baron Munchhausen"-maneouver, which is a metaphor of a physically impossible act, where Munchhausen boasts having saved himself from drowing in a swamp by pulling himself out by the ponytail on his wig. Moving that roadblock - or going around it - often appeared to be that exact - near impossible - act to me. And indeed: All I can do to liberate myself from past agony is to find the strength of pulling myself out. It may be a trivial thing to find, and it's an insight certainly coming pretty late in my life. But it is beginning to take crystal-clear shape and form.

On a different note: I find travelling a very inspiring experience and I went crazy with the camera, shooting 3,052 images in those 10 days (yes, that's an average quota of 300 a day, which I'd transfer onto the laptop every night). I am now working hard on selling this trip in as many ways as possible: I have a writing assignment with a German travel magazine, and I'm working on selling some of the pictures I took. I would love to make this into a career switcher and keep on writing and photographing for travel and lifestyle magazines. At the same time, my musical acquisition endeavours seem to yield results and I am booked in two different places, on a regular basis in one of them and on a semi-regular basis in the other. I am hoping for this to gain some momentum, predominantly in the material connotation. But the most important thing is: I seem to get my life back!