Nov 17: It’s my final full day at the workaway I had been staying at. It’s been an enjoyable time, no doubt, but I’m very much ready to leave. One thing I’m learning about myself already through this trip is that the work trade arrangement has a far lesser appeal to me than it did when I was younger. It’s undeniably a good way to save money when traveling, and it does afford some good opportunities to get to know people in a more intimate type of setting, but you’re effectively forced to give up a fair bit of autonomy and control over your life while doing it. You are living in someone else’s home, after all, so there’s obviously going to be lines and limits regarding certain things. And maybe this one’s more so on me and my own disposition, but since the host is providing food and accommodations I’m very mindful that I never slip into any sort of deficit in the energetic exchange, meaning I make myself more accessible than is my norm. I’d rather give more of my self than not enough.
Maintaining that position wears me out in a way it didn’t use to, probably partly due to being at the beginning of my mid-life and partly due to my becoming more of an introvert as I get older. I can play the extrovert easy enough for the most part, but it is not my preferred orientation. Honestly, at this stage I’m somewhat questioning how much of this workaway biz I actually want to engage in. Both my intuition and my tarot readings (yes, I practise tarot) have strongly been indicating that I need a greater degree of control over my own life and the way it is directed, which I think is an aspect of the age element previously mentioned as well as the requirements rooted in the stage of life I’m currently in.
I’ve spent much of my adult life swinging between free flowing flexible adaptation and highly private, secluded hermitization. My sense is that I need to find a greater balance between those two polarized states of being, and I’m currently questioning whether giving my life over to other people’s dreams and ambitions is the way to achieve that. I have something of a tendency towards codependency, letting others overtake my will for their own means. I’ve reigned that in big time in the last few years but I do still default towards it too easily.
In astrological terms, for those who speak that language, I’ve got a south node and ascendant in Libra that works contrary to my north node and sun in Aries. Simply put, that means I get swayed by other people’s wants at first and then abandon ship as soon as my own inner fires start feeling the loss of personal autonomy too much. There’s an element involved in actualizing myself as the man I sense I’m meant to be that isn’t congruent with relinquishing that level of authority to others.
So for now, I’m putting a hold on continuing the work trade thing, at least for a few days so I can delve further into my feelings. Like I said, it saves a lot of money, and I still find it a preferable way to connect with people while traveling, since I have zero interest in bars and clubs or partying anymore. In all honesty, I find myself somewhat questioning whether I even want to continue this trip through Costa RIca…
Well, I don’t need to find an answer right this moment. I’ll finish this post with a little anecdote regarding this particular workaway. There’s a swimming pool here currently filled with tilapia fish. The host is putting together a fairly ambitious aquaponics system involving them and a bunch of raised garden beds. We’ve made multiple attempts at catching some of the big ones for dinner, but to no avail. First we tried a method of cornering them with a fence like thing I (very jankily) built and then trying to catch them with a net. No es bueno… Then he got a weighted throwing net. My first attempt… nada. My second attempt came with a single moderate success, but one fish isn’t enough for a meal. Finally the host caved in and recruited the support of some of the local fishermen. Mucho pescado! So after all that effort I got to have a taste and muy delicioso it was. The story had a happy ending. Well, for me at least, not so much for the fish. But it’s in a better place now, my belly.
And here’s a fun bit of trivia for you. There are scorpions here. I actually had one scurry right past my wrist while working on a rock wall. So lucky it didn’t sting me. I’m allergic to bees and wasps (full on anaphylactic shock), so there’s the possibility my bod would not have such a good time taking in that venom. But a neato thing about them is that they glow in the dark when under the ultraviolet shine of a black light. They’re like little ravers! What a weird thing for their evolution to include. And thus concludes today’s fun fact as well as this post. Hope you had a good one!
ACMindworks 