Its a year now since I am traveling the world and it feels like 3 years. It seems to be the more you experience in a year the longer it feels. The more redundant things become the faster. And I really can’t say I didn’t experience a lot. From hanging out with murderers, working with photographers, taking about 12.500 pictures, running away from bears, getting into Buddhism, almost got killed by mossy bites (ok I am exaggerating a little here), working as a buzzy, running after kangaroos, get lost in fog because of taking X-tasy, meet 1000 kinds of different people, eating pork brain and all the other beautiful things I can’t think of it now. It was an amazing year so far and I never thought it changed me that much and I will find my way I want to go. All I have to say is thanks to all the people who supported me so far on my trip. My trip doesn’t end yet. I still travel another 6 month even though the next 3 month are more like staying in China | Nanjing. After going to Mongolia, Pakistan and India I will return to Germany; my roots and my people in december. Awesome time in my life.

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Learning from traveling can mean, getting to know other cultures, other languages, different manors and see landscapes you didn’t see before. It also can mean to come closer to yourself. But coming closer to yourself is related to more than just be on your own for a year. Its the ability to understand what all this is about. All this is me, my world, the society I grew up and I am right now, my family and finally pure freedom and independence.

But what I asked myself tonight is a simple question. Do I really travel or am I just doing what people from my world understand when they talk about traveling. I had all the money to do all this. I had all the convenience, all the freedom to decide for myself to do all this. I had the support and the help from my family, especially from my mom, to realize traveling. No I am in China, after 11 countries I “traveled” one year. I had these moments of feeling free, being happy, being totally disconnected to any duties. Felt the spirit in my heart and in my mind. But all of a sudden everything seems to be not honest enough. Not fair the way I treated myself to do all this. Hopping from society to society, not having any time for myself to think about what I do and what I want to do. And there we go again. Why do I even have to think about what I want to do in life? Why did I tell myself and all those people around me that I finally found myself in photography? DId I really made this choice or is it just a subconscious pressure from the world I grew up to think that I have to choose one thing to do in my life in order to get the money to live in he same world where I am from.

I felt totally free when I had nothing to loose and the more I am coming close to competition and society the more I can feel the pressure again. But in this case its not the pressure to be good enough to earn money with my photography. Its the pressure of doing something to get the money I need to live in a city like Nanjing. And its not about Nanjing, its about the city by itself. Society. Society is putting pressure on me. I felt bored again after a long long time and to be bored means in my understanding the feeling of “you could to something better with your time”. But I thought I reached already the point, where time doesn’t matter anymore, where the fact that I have to wait 2 hours or 2 days doesn’t matter anymore and going with the flow is the only truth. But if I want to live in this city, in any city, I need to find a job and therefore I need to apply and smile and suit and compare and bargain and do all these things what makes you act not 100% you. Not being free.

Although I still would have the chance to throw my plans away. Send my electronic stuff back home: my camera, my laptop, my mp3 player. I could travel without any money. Work for small money, work for accommodation and work for myself to survive the real traveling. I would feel probably totally free again. I don’t have to follow any pattern of society in order to sell my photography, to prove myself to anybody. Just prove me that I am able to be on my own. When I would like to feel free for the rest of my life, I need to keep on doing this kind of traveling forever. Until I die, until I get hit by a car, until I drown in a mighty river. I will not be a part of a society anymore, there is no hold back home, because nobody would know where I would be. But once I would like to have this kind of traveling just as an experience, there is the need to come back, to keep in touch. And I would return back to the place where I have to make money with a job “I’ve chosen” to do.

Where I am right now? I’am stuck. Stuck between two worlds. Between the world of society and therefore their money and their success and the world of solely independence, the world where I have to achieve nothing but live as I would live in my dreams for ever. To prove myself that I would be tough enough to choose world number two, I have to drop everything but my thoughts. I wonder if I would have the balls for that. As long as I can’t decide in which world I want to be, I will continue only with “traveling” and get the glance of freedom in high mountains, lonely beaches and wild landscapes.

I can’t be unhappy with the fact that I found out about all this. But once again, once again, I learned something new: The difference between Happiness and Enlightenment.