Ground rush 2.0

Ground rush 2.0 hit in Bali and it hit hard. I was between a rock and a hard place: excited to get to Australia and see my Aussie friends from ENP, learn to dive, and visit Uluru, but also terrified that I was halfway through my trip and I wasn't actually experiencing it. Being so focused on figuring out the immediate (what am I eating, where am I sleeping, where is my bus going to, how can I get to where I need to be, etc) had left me completely numb to what was coming up or what I was doing at the time. I was absolutely buzzing for diving, of course! But first I had to figure out how the Greyhound busses worked, how am I getting to Uluru, where should I be staying in Cairns, etc. It's all pretty peesy if you have unlimited time because you can just see what comes your way, but having a schedule made it pretty imperative to be on top of it all. It's hard to take the advice to "live in the moment" - as much as I truly wanted to, if I did that then I'd have nowhere to sleep and no way to get where I needed to be.  I think that's another thing of travelling alone. If you have someone to share he organisation then it's much easier to keep an eye on the big picture whereas all I'm seeing is one puzzle piece to the next to the next. After a couple of days on the beach I figured that I needed to compromise: stop trying to plan ahead for the things that can't be planned yet, and figure out what can be and leave it at that. I still hate the phrase "it is what it is" with a passion, so let's go with "that's what we can do for now, so enjoy what we've got".