together and apart
I've been talking about hitchhiking to Japan and staying there for a year ever since early 2013 when I made my first footsteps in Beirut. The experience hitchhiking from Oslo to Lebanon was absolutely amazing; my days were filled by an endless stream of beautiful encounters. This inspired me and I felt like I was inspiring other people through my photographs and blog-posts. I was doing something meaningful for the first time in my life. If that wasn't enough, Lebanon quickly became a place I could call home, a place were I made would make friends for life.
I had to make new plans to continue this. The most logical thing to do was to start making plans for a next trip. That's when I got the idea to continue from where I left off and hitchhike further east, all the way to Japan. After all, why not; it had been so simple last time.
So I've been talking about this. Talking, talking, talking and preparing.
In the meantime something happened.
I met the most amazing girl. Ever.
And we both fell in love.
I'm not going to go too much into the details of how we met because she tells the story far better than I do but on January 6th 2013 I moved back to Norway and we started our relationship. After about a month she moved in with me. We've been together for one and a half year now.
But then there's this Japan trip which I haven't been able to get out of my mind.
I never asked myself if it was the ring thing to do.
It was my one big project, that defined me as a photographer and as a person among my friends.
"If you talk the talk you gotta walk the walk"
I have been foolish enough to think that we would be alright.
That I could just walk out the door for one and a half year and that it wouldn't affect our relationship in a negative way. I thought it would be nice to miss each other.
But it isn't. It hurts like hell.
I was being blinded by my love for adventures and I put my mission of proving that "we live in a world far better than the world depicted in mass media" before everything else. Still, I said goodbye to my career in Norway, my family, friends, morning rituals, overnight bicycle trips, ... everything.
And most of all, I said goodbye to my girlfriend.
I'm going to hitchhike to Japan, prove (to the world and to myself) that we live in a world worth defending but I'm not going to stay in Japan for a year if it means being away from her.
Ida, I love you and there's nothing I look more forward to than being reunited with you.