Snail's Pace

This great writing project I resolved to undertake is going ever-so-slowly (hence the post title). It is partly due to current circumstances such as parenting a young boy, daily routines at work and home, and just plain indifference towards the whole exercise. I sometimes hearken back to days and nights, spent holed up in my various flats I occupied in Mongolia as I spent hours drinking beer, listening to music and writing in my journals. There was much inspiration to be had from my thoughts pertaining to solitude and isolation, relationships, and life in general as a stranger in a strange land. I like to think I came out of that two year experience a better writer, but in reality it was an exercise in self-indulgence.
I debated with myself often in those journals whether or not I would share them with my future wife and child(ren). I haven't done so as of yet. Actually, most of it would be incomprehensible to my two-year old son anyway. I haven't shared any of it with my wife. She did not know me back then, and if she had, she would have had nothing to do with me. She knows I am no paragon of virtue, so that is probably sufficient information in itself. Every now and then when I have a few moments to myself, I blow off the cobwebs and settle down to read through them again. As the years go by, the more distant these memories become. I don't doubt the authenticity, as it is all there in sloppy handwriting. I have not yet determined what to do with my tomes of drunken insights. I am thinking at this point that it might be appropriate to buy a bottle of vodka someday (a perilous drink that I have not touched since returning back to Canada 14 years ago) and polish it off with a good old-fashioned book burning ceremony. It is probably time to finally put that chapter / those chapters to rest.
I am wrestling with my conscience as I write this, and odds are I will not end up doing what I just said I would do. One thing is sure, though - the life I led and the experiences I had in Mongolia are definitely a fading object in my mind's rear-view mirror. Marriage and fatherhood have completely changed my outlook on life. I no longer have the luxury of time to indulge in my whims, nor do I really have the desire to. I do think about the friendships I forged over there, and often wonder what those friends are like now. I sometimes selfishly wonder if they ever think about me, as I do them. I often wonder if they, like me, settled into family life and (unlike me) never really gave their past a second thought. In this age of instant information,  it wouldn't be too difficult to track some old friends down. I imagine many of them do keep in touch through Facebook. Personally, I struggle with the concept of putting myself out there.
First and foremost, as I grow older, I tend to prefer remaining somewhat anonymous. My present-day clique consists of my wife and son, and I like it like that. I also remain leery about reconnecting with old friends, because I wonder to myself if I would have all that much in common with them anymore. I know I have changed a great deal, and I am sure that they have too. We came together in a unique fashion, in that we were cast together through a shared volunteer experience in a strange and very foreign country. Fact is, time has not stood still for any of us. We have compartmentalized memories of one another, however we are no longer those same people that met and fell in with one another so easily.
 There is something to be said about hanging on to the mystique of "What ever became of......" so and so. I like to imagine that everybody I knew went on to have great lives after leaving Mongolia. Odds are that probably isn't the case. It took me a very long time to get there, so I can imagine others had bumpy roads along the way too. As aimless as I was over there, I was even more adrift when I returned back from my two year sojourn. At least in Mongolia, I had gained some level of confidence in my teaching abilities, however I was not so sure I wanted to continue that path back in Canada. The longer it took me to decide as I bounced from job to job, and from couch to couch, the less sure I was about teaching again. Truth be told, I managed to pull it off in Mongolia just by virtue of my ethnicity and mother tongue. I knew I could not pull that off here. Alas, though, this is another tangent that could be best dealt with another time when I feel the inspiration to write again. Judging by the snail's pace I am going at now, it will probably be in the next six months or so. Until then, "bayartai" or "so long".