- I'm taking a night bus from Buenos Aires to Cordoba tomorrow night. It's a bit further away from Roasario (a bit on the local scale, another four to five hours on a bus, and nine hours or so on the whole), but it's sounds significantly more exciting, and like there are quite a few cool day trips to take. We'll see in a few days, I guess.
- I'll return to Buenos Aires either Friday morning or Saturday morning, on another night bus. TBD based on where I decide I'd rather spend another day.
- Saturday evening will be spent at PersonalFest. James McCartney, The Hives and a host of other local (I think) bands will be playing. Oh, and a small band called the Arctic Monkeys will be headlining. Maybe you've heard of them?
- Most of Sunday and part of Monday will be spend on a bus to Puerto Madryn. That city, located roughly in the middle of nowhere, is the gateway to a (supposedly) amazing nature reserve called the Valdes Peninsula. It´s also supposed to be Argentina's best scuba diving location. I'll be there until Thursday morning, when I'll fly to Ushuaia.
- Why fly to Ushuaia? It would take two buses, and almost thirty hours total by bus. I'm not that much of a masochist. I would have considered hitch-hiking, had I not been in a hurry.
- Why not fly down there too? A concentrated effort not to be too spoiled, I guess. Although the flight down to Puerto Madryn is much cheaper than the one to Ushuaia, the bus ride is also significantly less annoying. Namely, it's one fucking bus.
- Starting November 15th I'll be on a cruise to Antarctica, but that's a whole other story. (Fun fact: Did you know that Antarctica is considered a desert?)
Actually, that wasn't the interesting part of this post, at least not in my mind. I arrived in Buenos Aires Wednesday afternoon, knowing I have booked the the hostel until Sunday, and that I need to figure out what I'm doing until the cruise. I entirely neglected dealing with that for the first couple of days (why worry now about something you can figure out later?), and at some point on Friday thought about it a bit, and realized I know nothing, Jon Snow. After pondering about it some more Saturday morning, with the great help of the staff here, I ended up with a few ideas, including the course I ended up taking. At that point, I was stuck.
If you've known me for long enough (especially if you're my dear family), you know I sometimes have a terrible time making decisions. In the past, I was truly horrible - If a restaurant menu looked too inviting, I would agonize myself over what to order for lunch. I've dealt with that shit, and when decisions are truly inconsequential, I either make them rapidly or outsource them to someone else. Unfortunately, actually meaningful decisions still pose me a problem. Let's use Saturday as an example:
As I was very tired (late night celebrating Halloween), I decided I'll nap it over. Of course, the napping proved to be of little help with the decision-making process. Slightly more helpful were my mom and a dear friend I consulted with. However, even after chatting about it with them to the point of exhaustion (at least on their side), I wasn't sure. As the night approached, I started to realize how mentally exhausted (and perhaps even crippled) this ridiculous exercise in over-thinking left me: After cooking myself dinner, I cancelled plans I had to go out that night, and then turned down a free ticket to a club, with one of the guys from the hostel, his girlfriend, and four other women. I've never been a huge fan of clubs, but still... Face, meet palm.
In order to prevent the same thing from happening today, I basically made my decision in the morning, and then made sure I don't rot in the hostel all day (I actually didn't leave the hostel for the whole day on Saturday. Fuck.). I went out for lunch with a woman from Chicago who just checked in, and we braved the rain to walk around and see the Obelisk and Teatro Colon (famous opera house). Then I figured out what exactly I want to book and where, and the booking shall commence tomorrow morning.
What can I learn from this? The nihilist within me says I should treat every decision as inconsequential, because ultimately, well, they all are. Never count on a nihilist for good advice... Instead, I should probably realize that after eliminating the stupid and highly illogical options, most of my plans aren't half bad. I should pick whichever ones charms me the most, would only work now, or the one I manage to convince fun people to tag along to. If all else fails, I should just make a decision and start implementing it.Wasting a whole day pondering it is just not worth it.
Anything else I should take away from this?
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