Pause

Yo! Much of this will be for my own memory since I don't have a notebook with me, but I hope it's interesting for you all. I'm writing from New Zealand, and life is good! First, a small chronology of my post-Jeju travels thus far.

June 13: fly Jeju to Seoul. Meet Jim Welp, Ben Welp, and Bill Richeson. Partying commences. Bill and I go out until 5am and meet up with Emily and Sam MacLean.
June 14: Hang out and do Korean stuff.
June 15: visit traditional Korean vestments parlor, eat good foods, drink good drinks. Wallow in Korea nostalgia.
June 16: miss my check-in time for flight to Sydney. Buy new flight to Sydney. Fly overnight to Sydney.
June 17: Wake up in Australia. Go to hostel. Receive message from Jack Sellman that he's staying at the hostel across the street from mine. Walk along harbor in Sydney. Take opera house tour. See Lore dance show at Opera House at night. Sit next to British guy named Connor who is by chance staying at the same hostel as me. Go out with him and other folks from the hostel.
June 18: meet Sam DeVice, her mom, and her mom's Australian friends for harbor lunch cruise. Go with Sam to aquarium. Drink beer and eat pizza. Go out.
June 19: Jack Sellman and I go for lunch and end up galavanting around town together. We go to the Skydeck of the Sydney tower and do the Skywalk on the outside of the tower. Terrifying. End up at bar attached to my hostel. Dance the night away.
June 20: hang more with Jack. Go shopping and have lunch. Take evening bus to Newcastle. Chill at hostel for the night.
June 21: walk out by Newcastle beach and watch dolphins for a few hours. Walk the whole coast, go back and shower, have dinner and go to a craft beer place, turn in early.
June 22: final day in Newcastle. Walk all the way down Hunter St. and see cool shops and such. Very bohemian. Quite enjoy it. Eat a nice dinner and turn in early.
June 23: catch early flight to Melbourne. Go to hostel, rent a bike, ride around South Melbourne and to the port. Come back, go to trivia night with people from hostel, turn in early.
June 24: bum around at Forgotten Soldier memorial and botanical garden. Meet Liam (a friend I met traveling in Prague last summer) for dinner and beers. Go to night market. Meet Erin, a friend who I met in Ireland last summer. Go out with her and her friends.
June 25: fly to Auckland. Arrive at 6pm, pick up car begin driving to Hobbiton. 45 minutes away from Auckland, GPS dies, moment of panic. Stop at gas station, cigarette lighter in car for power doesn't work. Follow signs back to Auckland airport car rental, sleep in parking lot.
June 26: get the car swapped out easily. Drive to Hobbiton. Beautiful green rolling hills and mountains for the drive. Hobbiton is sick. Drive to Rotorua and go zorbing. Check into a hostel because I'm tired as hell and don't want to drive any further. Check out the lake. Have a pork belly sandwich. Retire to hostel for relaxing.

It's been a hell of a trip so far! I've got 5 days left and then I'll be home for 24 hours before embarking on my road trip with Mikey. I'm going to be ready to settle down by the time I get to Rome! Some reoccurring thoughts I've had during the travels:

1. "Holy smokes, do I even comprehend how lucky I am?"
2. "I'm really freaking lucky."
3. "I miss Jeju and friends."
4. "I love these accents!"
5. "Driving on the left side of the road? It doesn't make sense."

That's about all I have to say for travels. It's been rad. I'm currently at my hostel in a room where 4 Germans are watching Crazy Stupid Love. So that's interesting. Going to wake up tomorrow and drive to Lake Taupo. No idea what I'm doing from there.

I titled this post "Pause" for a few reasons. First, I just wanted to remind myself to take the time to look at my life and at this year and this trip and reflect on it all. It's important to pause to do that. Recently, I've been thinking a lot about trying to slow myself down amidst all of the craziness right now. I need to stop and realize just how incredibly lucky I am to live the life I am living. It feels good to acknowledge that.

Another thing that has made me think of pausing is a current trend I've seen online that I really like, most boldly embodied in my good friend, mentor, and former teacher, Frank Corley. People, including Frank, are getting semicolon tattoos for suicide awareness. It symbolizes that something could've ended (a sentence, or a life in the metaphor), but it didn't. It was just a pause and then a moving forward.

In the metaphor, the focus is on the moving forward part, and that is really important. I see the pause as equally important. Whether it's a suicide attempt or just taking a moment to pause and realize your flaws, you have to have that moment in the first place to be able to move forward from it. It's not something you should necessarily be rid of entirely. I'll use my own experience as an example.

Anyone who knows me knows that this current pace I'm going at is my norm. I rarely slow down, and socially, I'm always going in a hundred different directions. Senior year of college in the fall, I started to act a lot less like myself. I had ten thousand reasons to be happy. I was dating a great girl who I remain good friends with; I had great friends; I was ready for graduation and doing well in school. Despite all that, I didn't feel like I could find reasons to be happy. I found this weird rut of self-loathing and self-doubt that was really uncharacteristic of the self that I knew. I scrutinized everything about myself from my weight, to my performance at work, to just about every word that came out of my mouth.  It all hit a head when I started feeling like I wasn't fit to live or wanted around by anyone. I started thinking about whether the world would even realize I was gone.

I was lucky enough to realize at that point how out of character it was, and I went to see my doctor, who suggested I start taking antidepressants and vitamin D supplements. It's seemed to help, and I've continued taking them since. I feel like myself again, and it was my being able to pause and realize something was wrong. I'm thankful for the pause, even if it sucked at the time. It's me, and I like me.

This year, I've been finding myself taking pictures of things that are broken. There was a broken bridge at the DMZ, broken trees like crazy, a wilted flower here and there, a broken dock in Melbourne this week, and several other fine examples. I think the point I'm getting at is that there's beauty in broken things, and at some point, we're all going to encounter that pause, no matter what form it comes in, and we'll have to decide whether to make it a semicolon or a period. We're all a little broken, but I think everyone's a little beautiful, too. Pauses can be good. I've learned a lot about myself by admitting I needed a little bit of help. Nobody can do it alone, after all, and I think I'm a better person as a result of dealing with some personal struggle.

If you ever find that the world is getting to be a little too much, I urge you to make that pause a semicolon and not a period. Your problems aren't petty, and especially if they're uncharacteristic, it takes the help of others to get you back to base level. Reach out to me. I'll get to WiFi faster than you can spell "WiFi" and Skype you and help you make it through the day. Don't go giving up. Life's a beautiful thing, and as I sit here in New Zealand, one of the luckiest guys I know in one of the most beautiful places on earth, I'm very acutely aware of that.

Anyway, I got a little soap box-ish there, but I think it's important that people acknowledge that no one expects you to be perfect. Occasionally, I'll have friends say things like, "Your life is perfect," or, "You do so many cool things!" While I appreciate the sentiment, it's easy to make life look good through Facebook and Instagram. You only see what I want you to see after all. Honestly, life is really good, but I hope that acknowledging some personal struggle in a public way will reinforce to you all that everyone struggles, and everyone encounters pauses and problems. I'm trying every day to take the negatives and turn them into positives and let them shape who I am.

Enough is enough for the evening. A long day of driving tomorrow. If you'll be in Chicago August 6, I would love to see you all at a benefit for my brother Brad Zandstra who is struggling through his second battle with cancer and is in the thick of chemo right now. He could really use our help, as the costs really add up. The links to the event page and the donation page if you can't make it are below. Goodnight, all!

https://www.facebook.com/events/114589755543548/
http://www.gofundme.com/xha8us