I knew my final peaceful week of yoga and relaxation in Pokhara was the calm before the storm, and boy I was right. The eye of the storm hit the day I arrived home with every day and night packed full-to-the-brim with hens parties, farewells, birthdays (including my own big two-eight), shopping, weekend weddings, welcome-home celebrations, and a five-day International Peace Research Association conference where I photographed, attended, networked and presented.

A coffee, sugar and chocolate addiction later, yesterday the storm let out it’s final blow. I went cold turkey. I felt depressed. I was mentally and physically exhausted. But with the help of family, friends, and a laugh (and little cry) watching Toy Story 3, I got through the day.

Today the storm has calmed, and the sun is shining. How one can go from down and depressed to up and happy overnight I don’t know. Maybe there is something to the New Moon thing? Today even news of not receiving the PhD scholarship I’d been hoping for hasn’t got me down.

While I could be worried about my future, now not having my next few years secured, I’m not. These things happen for a reason. Good thing a few days ago I accepted a part-time admin job at my university’s Centre for Peace and Conflict studies – at least I’ll have a little money coming in to survive on given my savings are almost sucked dry.

On a positive note, I received a dose of independent feedback from an editor about the second draft of my book (the one about South America) and guess what? Someone who doesn’t know me actually enjoyed reading it!!! But at 450 pages still too long. Begin Draft Number Three…

I’m getting sidetracked. I would like to apologize for the lack of entries over the duration of this storm. And now for this long rant about my own life.

The point of this entry is to prepare you for the entries to come. Now the storm is over I finally feel ready to process and publish the daunting thoughts that have come from the leftist idealism that experienced at the peace conference juxtaposed with the more right-wing conservatism resulting from my experiences in India.

I have a lot of interesting (and controversial) entries written in my head so it’s just a matter of getting them out in a way that makes sense.

A warning: while I don’t want to offend, in the name of a “pursuit for truth” I will continue my overtly honest style of writing. I write what I think. That’s what I do. And I hope that anyone reading my thoughts will be able to empathise with the lens from which they come from, and engage with me in a dialogue if you have an opposing view. Or if you agree – I really love hearing your thoughts.

No idea is static. No thought is ever permanent. While this is the danger of writing down one’s thoughts, my hope is that because on this blog so many of thoughts are being shared, and because one can see that such thoughts change quite rapidly, the process of dynamic thought is in some way being captured. The pluses and minuses of the live nature of blogs…

So please, when reading the entries that follow in the weeks (or years) to come, take them as snapshots of a thinking process – thoughts and perspectives as they develop over time. And know that they are coming from a somewhere that (at least what I perceive to be) a peace-loving, truth-loving, people-loving and planet-loving place.

Picture:

Uyuni Salt Lakes, Bolivia. Only the most beautiful most heavenly experience of my life. There was no storm, but it looks like an eye inside a storm to me.