Creature Comforts
Residing in New York City provides me with all the creature comforts I could ask for, like Fairway’s bakery and live tapings of the Colbert Report. I spend every day at the so-called center of the universe in Manhattan, in a five-by-six-foot cubicle on the fourteenth floor of a building that overlooks Madison Square Park. The remaining 60 hours that I’m not working or sleeping, I spend shuttling myself back and forth across the bridge to Brooklyn, taking the elevator to the gym on the fourth floor, or staring at my laptop/television/latest book. Sure, they say that one of the keys to happiness is making the best of your current situation - and I do. But I’m starting to feel the nagging itch of restlessness. I don’t know if this is symptomatic of the intense wanderlust that’s been bubbling just beneath my skin for a decade — or perhaps just having disposable discretionary income.
This morning, I read part of an alumni newsletter from the University of Chicago, which had a brief section on faculty-led “study trips.” Now, I would NEVER typically consider doing something so gauchely marketed - I’m sure most of the other muklukkers are former ScavHunt leaders. But upon closer inspection, I realized they are offering a trip to Antarctica with one of the foremost evolutionary paleobiologists(!).
Wow. Just earlier this week, I was daydreaming on the train (as I am prone to do), and decided that Antarctica is one of the places I must see before I die. Of course, there’s no way I can afford the trip at my current salary and current student loan repayment schedule. In an ensuing conversation, I asked the following question:
Is it possible for me to go back to school to get my Ph.D in EXPLORATION?
I vote we bring back the times of royally-funded exploration. Traversing the Silk Road to China. Mapping the coast of Tunisia. I am not even opposed to travelling in a potentially-dangerous land, people. BRING ON THE TERRORISTS!
Or… barring the ascension of royalty to the democratically-elected throne of the United States of In-My-Dreams, maybe I should get a job that is focused on travelling. And doing something productive. Journalism? International development? I am wont to write. Surely that would predispose me to some travelling.