Urrg. Mind has been sucked into travel-obsessed vortex, a jumbled confusion of hostels in Quito and jungle trekking in Manu. Why am I unable to do anything calmly? Why does a mass of to do list render me incapable of regular breathing?

A week seems like the longest time and the shortest time. I want it to be over, and to be on the plane. Will I relax then? Will I ever?

You know what's sad? The fact that when you're a kid, you wonder why adults ever bother doing stuff like going to work every day and brushing their teeth, when they don't have to, and there's no one there to make them do it. And you think, when I'm older and autonomous, I am going to revel in all those things. But then of course you don't. And you realise, you've become your own monitor. You no longer want to do any of those things. (At least not beyond that brief period when you're seventeen and living alone for the first time and suddenly realise you're monitor-free - sadly temporarily, until actual adulthood kicks in). And there is joy neither in wanting freedom but not having it, nor in being offered but refusing it. How stupid that both envy the other.

I think I was on the train this morning with a bunch of students on the way to an exam... there are often one or two of them these days, sitting quietly, clutching a large textbook and looking rather miserable. And because I never see them that early in the morning at any other time of year, I've leapt to the conclusion that they're examming. So I was sympathetic, but at the same time feeling little other than nerves at my own predicament - last-minute Observer booking I'd never done before and didn't know anything about. So I tried to convince myself I was going to an exam instead. I was sure that would make me feel better. But for the most part, it was just depressing. I can remember what it's like in objective terms, I can picture myself in the situation, and I know I was terrified; but I couldn't feel it. I knew what would be going through my head - seemingly endless rehearsed notes, paragraphs, ideas and theories and arguments - but I couldn't recall any of them. Obviously. I shouldn't have been surprised. But I was, naively, and sad. And of course I'm happy I'm not doing an exam right now, I wouldn't switch places with any of those students if I could (particularly now I have discovered there is very little for me to do here in Observer Business), but there is always that unavoidable nostalgia.

Anyway, it was an interesting exercise, for a fleeting moment, on the commute.

You know you've been a hotdesker too long when...

You spend a whole morning working in a new office and don't realise you've worked there before until someone says "haven't you worked here before?"

Though Wilde and his one-liners are somewhat desperately over-quoted, this passage did strike a chord as I read it on the way to work this morning (and a tad too sombre for one-liners):

Out of the unreal shadows of the night comes back the real life that we had known. We have to resume it where we had left off, and there steals over us a terrible sense of the necessity for the continuance of energy in the same wearisome round of stereotyped habits, or a wild longing, it may be, that our eyelids might open some morning upon a world that had been refashioned anew in the darkness for our pleasure, a world in which things would have fresh shapes and colours, and be changed, or have other secrets, a world in which the past would have little or no place, or survive, at any rate, in no conscious form of obligation or regret, the remembrance even of joy having its bitterness, and the memories of pleasure their pain.

(True to form, today went on to prove things have taken a turn for the mundane. Though at least I can once more be thankful that at a newspaper, slacking off and reading magazines can, by a small stretch of the imagination, be disguised as working...)

Not, of course, to say that the days aren't a lot more bearable all of a sudden. Newfound energy from the break to Budapest (which was lovely), and of course the irresistible awareness that South America
approacheth, made more real every day - thanks this weekend to a (vaguely traumatic) yellow fever jab, and a seemingly very expectant pair of new hiking boots...

Just a brief "see y'all later" entry, to knock the iPod one off the top while I'm away for a week. God damn it, people as poor as me should not be going on week-long holidays. Must remember not to resent it. Must not blame Budapest. Must enjoy it while I'm there anyway; mustn't complain about having to go on holiday.

Inevitable that it would happen sometime. Today, on the tube, I was neatly encircled by five other people also listening to their iPods. It was strange. I didn't know whether to feel comfortably included in the community, or embarrassed at being equally victimised. This consumer culture still seems so very odd to me sometimes.

It did, however, allow me to indulge in the (surely popular?) commuter game of Guess What Other People Might Be Listening To (and try to resist the urge to kick the wanker rendering guessing superfluous with the sheer power of his headphones). Interesting to realise what we base these judgments on - clothes, age, haircut. I wonder what other people think I might be listening to? I wonder if they'd be remotely right?

Things I've been wondering about:

1. So, Carrie wrote one article per week, and from that earned enough money to sustain not only her New York lifestyle, but her shameful shoe habit?

Or are we meant to assume there are hundreds of unseen hours during which she sat at her desk in pyjamas, like a normal person, churning out money-spinning features on politics and the world economy?

2. Why are Summer and Zach going backpacking when they're loaded? Call me loony, but I assumed lack of funds would be the only reason for living like a bum.

3. Why does Liv Tyler feature in so many of my favourite films, how do I love them in spite of that, and why don't they manage to endear her to me?

4. Does no one else think "rather you than me" (aside from being an irritatingly vapid office-small-talk kind of comment) is a rather nasty thing to say? God, office-workers are so selfish.

Why do my most interesting trains of thought strike me as I'm falling asleep at night? Possibly the only time my mind is entirely free to wander. But trying to remember those thoughts now is like trying to grasp a forgotten dream. I do recall feeling on the cusp of a truly profound revelation - though I was in a semi-conscious, probably-delusional reverie, so it could have been anything. Something about being removed from the world in a very unsettling way... In that it tries to reach me, pretends it has, and probably even believes it has, but it's like it's reaching for me through a fog. There's a blur that separates me from it, that distorts its impression of me (and my impression of it? impossible to contemplate). All the words it tries to apply... self-image, relationships, family, career - they're all functionally indistinguishable from my own words, but the meaning is different, just slightly, but crucially. It makes me feel left behind somehow - but maybe we all are? Is the meaningful difference of words the result of an attempt to find a common language? One that seems to work for us all, but can't actually capture anyone? Do we all feel that blur - only it's not separating a collective world from a lone individual, but all of us from each other?

Ever have days that you feel may as well have not existed?

The trouble with having one major goal looming on your horizon is that everything you do up until that point seems useless. I just can't think what to do with myself anymore. My psyche is overshadowed. All I can think about are guidebooks that might be worth buying, or clothes I'm going to want to bring, or how fit and multilingual I'm going to want to be before we leave. To the extent that I'm working out, studying my new teach-yourself book, and going shopping tomorrow, for the first time in a year, now somehow justified because all of a sudden I have a reason to buy loads of summer dresses.
Oh dear.

Well, it's been a week of ups and downs... huge high, you may have spotted, after a scarily easy phone call to our travel agent. Then yesterday, which was awful, I'm ashamed to admit, solely because I was at home on my own with an eye infection. I don't know what came over me; the culmination of a long week of no work at all and too much depressing daytime TV, not to mention long months of never going out in the evenings. Partly jealous of my boyfriend for having friends and being able to go out, and partly jealous of his friends for being able to go out with him. In a way it's more frustrating because of the plane tickets, because we've just done this great thing, and I want to celebrate, but I can't. Feel like I'm being ridiculous and petty, but also suspect I'm being driven insane by this apparent house arrest.

Sorry for being unusually emotionally frank today; must be because livejournal is the only thing I have to talk to.