Trying to fall asleep on my night flight from Munich to Bangkok, I find myself lost in the thoughts that often return to me in moments when the body is at rest but the mind steadily fights on.

Life lately has been a mix of extraordinary events and a rather mild apathy towards them. My current situation captures it well. On my way to adventure, my mind is distracted by since long gone phantoms that in their absence offer neither confrontation nor reconciliation. In the last few months I finished my PhD. Defended. I’m done. Completto. And what should be relief or maybe even a small sense of pride, is missing. Not due to the presence of something bad, but maybe because of the disillusionment that follows from growing up. There appears to be no magic in the world. No golden tickets. No Rainbow Unicorn on a rescue mission. Other people are what they are, and we are no more than what we are: A collection of memories that shape our behaviour and dictates our thoughts. Our mind generates desires and dreams based on shadow; on phantoms that since long gone to haunt another opera. They’re not real, their consequence nonsense and to devote them time is as useless as feeding an empty cage. It’s painful to realise that this disillusion appears not as a temporary state, but as a continuous frame of mind. Yet I’m much more at ease now, perhaps, disappointingly, through a general ‘I don’t care’ and ‘that’s not my problem.’ Maybe in one of my stressed out moments, when the world seemed to me overwhelming, the devil took me up on my offer – a soul for some peace of mind.

So instead of being excited about career achievements, over the blended failed success of acquiring new friends and lovers or of the onset of spring, I’m devote myself to honour, not a phantom nor a shallow accomplishment, but one of my most deep-rooted whims: my spontaneity, or… if you so will: my lack of patience.

A few weeks ago I booked tickets to go solo backpacking in Thailand for almost three weeks. So here I am, tucked in an aeroplane blanket, with blue earplugs and a face mask to shed darkness over my eyes as my adventure starts with the familiar and ever haunting ‘insomnia’…