Porthole

Changeling (Dotage)

PROMPT March 19th

How are you different now than you were in the year 2010?
What have been the most significant changes in your life in the last ten years?

I moved to Montana in 2008 and returned to Costa Rica in 2009 and again in 2010.

I had been to 3 countries (Canada doesn't count because I grew up on the border): Costa Rica (for a year), Panama (in passing), Peru (for a month).

I had been here on WDC for 5 years and saw Blogville bloom and wither.

In 2011 I visited WDC friends in England. It was the best vacation ever in my life at that time, and still is.

I moved to Costa Rica at the end of 2011 and began to travel. But in retrospect there was a balance I didn't expect. What I gained by traveling around the world (2015) and visiting 39 more countries: Norway+, Sweden+, France, Luxemburg, Netherlands, Belgium, Germany+, Denmark, Portugal+, Spain, Japan+, Australia, South Africa, U.A.E., Ireland, Kosovo+, Albania, Montenegro, Makedonia+, Bulgaria+, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia+, Romania, Taiwan+, Turkey, Austria, Slovenia, Italy, Switzerland, Croatia, Bosnia... Nicaragua, Mexico, Estonia+, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland (not in order, some more than once +), I lost in connections to local people. Some have died, moved away, moved on.

Travel became my life. If movement = life, than I've been dying this past year.

In my dotage I feel like all the enthusiasm and energy I had once has dissipated. My mind slips more and my body is less willing to move at all. There are days I barely get up the stairs. I have few friends, none are close.

It's as if I'm a changeling, not at birth, but in old age.