Introvert to Extrovert

This summer I had a conversation with a friend about the movie The Beach. (If you haven't seen it, it's worth a watch)

It wasn't so much the movie itself, but the idea of abandoning your everyday life in search of something more. Just pack up some shit and leave for some distant shore.

We were discussing the idea, and I brought up the question, "Do you think you could do it? Just leave everything and everyone you've ever known to go on some adventure, maybe never to return?"

She seemed surprised that my answer was "yes".

(In all reality it would never happen. I have my obligations, my friends, family, possessions, yada yada... )

But in a deeper way I completely think I could do it, given the right circumstances. I've never (in my post-childhood years) felt completely at home anywhere. It's not that I don't fit in, or that I'm necessarily unhappy where I am, but it's always seemed that I belonged somewhere else. Even at this moment, as I sit in front of this screen in the wee hours of the morning, I'm thinking of all the places in the world that I could be. It's as if my everyday life is below my standards, but there's no way to get out.

So I imagine packing up a bag of essentials, emptying my bank account into my wallet, and leaving. No goodbye note, no forwarding address, no trace.

Nothing.

I'd travel where the wind blew me, preferably off this continent. I'd work shitty jobs just to get by, and live every single day as if I was planning on dying that night. I'd fall in love for a week, fuck the girl silly, then pack up and leave. No remorse, no regrets. After all, I'd never go back to that place, so what's the difference? Then it's onto a new place.
I'd live like I've always wanted to. I'd say whatever I wanted, do whatever I pleased, then hit the road again. The world would be what I made it, instead of me being what the world had shaped. Time would be meaningless. I'd sleep all day with no responsibilities and swim in the ocean every night.

It would be just fucking grande! Freedom in the most fundamental sense of the word.

But the one part of this story that must be addressed is where does it all end?

At the end of the movie Leo returns to the real world, as true paradise was unattainable. And I suppose I'd come back too. Living day by day probably isn't all it's cracked up to be (just ask a street kid) and I'd need to come back to my friends/family/life again.

And I'd probably miss my cd collection too much.