Travel Blog 03: Temporary psychosis & exposure therapy

40 funny kangaroo facts that will make you jump

I think jetlag is misunderstood. I don’t think its about timezones or day-night cycles at all. I think that’s all symptom, not root cause. I think sitting on a plane at 10000 km above ground, and flying at 1000km/h, for ten hours, just turns you temporarily psychotic, because it is a deeply unnatural state for you body to be in on both a physical and spiritual level, and all the sleeping stuff happens after the fact.

I also thought I had beat jetlag, because I slept eight hours after landing, and woke up at 8 feeling wonderful, and I slept 8 hours each following night, until I didnt, and I fell asleep in the afternoon and was out for 15-16 hours. And now I just had a bath, and I was looking around the house, thinking to myself: I feel like I’m finally coming down.

The landscape is like all bits and pieces I’ve known from other continents, just put together in a weird new way. It doesn’t feel alien or foreign, only assembled in a novel way. That’s what I said the first day at least. I might feel otherwise when I wake up tomorrow, if I’m right about temporary psychosis.

I was hoping I’d be able to go through life never having to fly again. I’m not particularly crazy about the idea. I was chainsmoking cigarettes in the hostile architecture smoking room in the airport for hours before we took off. Turns out that a good way of getting over a fear of flying is to go on a ten hour plane ride, and then once you are done, immediately getting on a new plane, and doing ten more hours. Exposure therapy, but also with self hypnosis from exhaustion and sleep deprivation. Be the MKULTRA victim you want to see in the world. Now I’m not too worried about it in the irrational, panicked sense any more. I still don’t particularly want to fly a lot for the rest of my life, but legally I am obliged to do at least one more.

Australia is nice. People make a little bit of fun of me for being cautious about the dangerous animals. It is very much like the plane thing. I was saying about flying, I don’t really care about the flying being uncomfortable or whatever. It’s just the whole “you might die” thing. Same with the australian wildlife - I am not really “scared of spiders”, or snakes, or dropbears. Not in that sense, like, looking at them or whatever. I am just cautious about the whole “you might die” thing.

I am behind on my correspondence and I apologize to everyone I haven’t been able to get back to. I’ve been very busy the last week. And possibly clinically psychotic.

Job interview tomorrow. I travelled 10000 miles to make a lateral career move. I’m a little nervous, but I think I just have to see two spiders, then I’ll probably be fine.