i used to think that the idea of travel won't inspire more than just a collection of photographs that you'll show off to friends and wait for them to; in return tell you that your photography has improved.

but maybe, it was because i hadn't backpacked in a very very long time.

like very long.

that i was waiting to be hit in the head with Miley's wrecking ball or just thrown ice onto though i don't know how far it would have helped me realized that i was actually comfortably living in a mental dilapidated Mind Palace of rotted mullings, languid juxtaposed philosophies and recycled creativity if ever such form of intelligence exists.

i wanted a huge change. if i could afford it.

and like always. i should have known. my parents did the most insensible thing of asking me to replace my busy dad to visit my sister.

i didn't need to go. but i can't say that i regret it either now.

a part of me was horrifyingly hesitant, that my Singapore travels last year weren't (or were just exactly) as i dreadfully expected. and i'd not fear about my travels elsewhere, but as the days came closer to the beginning of my journey, i realized that i hadn't once bothered to consider that i deserved a try in so many other places i have never been or meet people i've never encountered.

i want to ride the Trans Siberian Railway across Russia. one day.
live in Jerusalem for a year, volunteering at the YMCAs there.
serve food to the poor and learn their culture in Tibet or Bhutan.
help recovering escaped North Koreans in Seoul to speak English and progress.

there was so much more. so little time.

but this trip revived that bucket list once more.

 

going to Korea (Seoul, Jeju, Ulsan and Busan) last week for about two weeks for midsummer to visit my sister living there was the most inpsiring (i know how tacky this is cuz i was cringing at that thought, too) i've had in ages. it reminded me of how much someone's effort to live for something so small as a lifelong passion (i watched a middle aged man play a gayageum  - which is rare for buskers by the way - anonymously in public at the end of Insadong street and wondered if he was just an unemployed man with a desperate need to live or a rich man with an unfulfilled dream) or the need to survive (i watched a woman in Jeju dive into the sea to catch urchins and wondered how many mouths she had to feed or was it just herself alone now). i've never been to a place that deeply affected my principles and philosophy that i had to sit up one night in this whole trip and think over my being and existence.

it felt like rediscovering myself.

 

it felt like being a Studio Ghibi fan and going to that mysteriously elusive Ghibiland and finding that i can find Ghibiland everywhere around me if i looked closer and searched harder.

and it's given me a chance to reasses my priorities and my thoughts of my future as well as my goals.

 

the experience also made me decide on rearranging some of my stories on AFF (and elsewhere on my personal profile and private ones) and their direction. i had this in my thought since last year, but was not eager to change it thinking that it will evolve on it's own and grow into something better.

but not every creation is beautiful if left on it's own. sometimes it reinterpretes itself and the writer themselves feel stuffed not knowing what to do after it's done. this was me for a few months.

ergo, my long, year long silence.

 

 

you may soon, notice a little rearrangement and  some kind of re-evolution (and i expect some disappointments or confusion, i understand but i hope you see the bigger picture here too) that will begin with changing the Title and Forward to a couple of my stories, shifting a few Chapters and most especially the storyline to fit the structure it had eventually become. i do not want to disappoint myself first to make a story that isn't solid (specifically here, on AFF since i'm bringing this up) in it's development because what matters to me later are that the opinions and critique that comes later would be pointless.

it's like cooking soba noodles with ramen and getting the flak from Bourdain and then not knowing if he would like it if i actually used soba in the first place.

if this in some way puts some misery on you, the reader. i do apologize.

in a way, i'm not familiar with fan-fiction writing more in it's growth process compared to it's context development. i would usually write at once by bulk chapters and sometimes throw them out or chuck them aside for months when i'm not satisfied. so yeah. i don't actually write like a fan-fiction writer in the first place. i am rather complicated, temperamental in my writing process but always with the intention of bringing out the best of my evolving capability and learning from the growth.

i am learning. and i hope as a reader, and writer yourselves; that i'll be guided by your thoughts, critique and ideas on my work.

 

the changes will begin soon.