#124 Sleep difficulties while traveling

Transcript

Alright, I'm at Haeundae Beach, which I just realized sounds like Hyundai is a car brand, but it's spelled different. And I'm probably pronouncing everything wrong. But this is the beach I've talked about a bunch of times. I just passed the mermaid statue. Now I'm on the beach proper. Feels good, man. So I got like a week left in Busan, and it's kind of nice in a way where, you know, I was just cramming stuff in in Japan like crazy, like every day. I got to go do a thing. Not like I had to. I wanted to. I just wanted to gorge it in like three months, though it's a very long time. Goes by fast. So one of the things that's kind of nice in a weird way about coming to Korea is since I have a double-length visa because Canadians, for some reason, get 180 days here. And, you know, Japan was the land of my dreams during COVID. If like, ah, I can't wait to go back to Japan. Where Korea, I only vaguely knew little bits and pieces. This is about from a couple of people that I've met from Korea. And, you know, some a little bit of media. And the nice thing about both those things, I guess, having twice as much time and being less invested. It, like, multiplies everything in the sense that, ah, the pressure's way down. And again, I say pressure, but it wasn't a bad thing in Japan. I'm looking forward to when I go back to Japan. It's going to be right back to that. It's just going to be like, fuck right now. I've been doing novels, fuck-editing podcasts. I'll squeeze in what I can, but it's just, let's just fucking go absorb. Where in Korea I can just relax more. If I spend a day doing nothing. It's like, who the fuck cares? I'm here for six goddamn months. It's no big deal. And I've been doing a lot more since I got to Busan for sure than I was in Seoul and Jeju. And I mean, I kind of got back into that Japan groove of like days and days in a row. I was coming back to this neighborhood and like, oh, let's explore the beach a bit. I'm going further up the beach and let's go to a different station and further up and go here and go there. It's nice to get that vibe again, but then last couple days I didn't do much anything. And it's like, ah, that's nice though. It's nice to just like, who gives a shit. I guess what I'm trying to get to is even though I have a week left. I don't feel like, oh, no, I got to squeeze things in. I got to do stuff. What will I do in my last week in Busan? It's like, yeah, whatever. Maybe I'll do something. Maybe I won't. Who the fuck cares? And that's kind of nice. I think it's own way. But the thing I did most want to do is just come here. This is just where my mind drifted. I'm like, well, where would I like to be? And it's just like, ah, that beach. And the mermaid statue. And then the walkway along the coast. And the Muntan Road was a bit weird at night, but I like it in the day. If I get there while the sun's still up, we'll see because it's pretty late in the day. I'll do that again all the way up to the next beach. And it's just like, yeah, this is just nice.

But what's weird, I don't know how like relatable this is because I don't know how relevant this is to anybody. I mean, this whole podcast is a little irrelevant to most people probably because it is just kind of weird to throw your North American life away and just start traveling somewhere else, not to have a job or an apartment or a family that you got to worry about back home. You know, the only way this works is because this is it. I'm not paying rent back home. I don't have a job to get back home. And basically, my family back home is just funneling money to me. It's not giving a crap about me coming home. Where are you, Papa? Papa, where are you? None of that. So this whole thing is kind of a weirdly irrelevant podcast to most people. I'm sure. But then on top of that, insomnia. I've always had insomnia my whole life. And you know, that's definitely come up in this show. this show. It definitely had some days in Japan where it's like, oh no, I stayed up all night. What the fuck? This is gonna be a bit of a weird day. But in general, I think partially because I was there in the winter and it became night so ludicrously early, that kind of kept me at a somewhat even keel in Japan just automatically. I basically woke up at 9 in the morning all the time because it was gonna be dark by like 4.30 or 5. It was like crazy how early it got dark. And if I didn't get enough sleep the day before, well too fucking bad. My body clock was gonna wake me up anyway and that was gonna be a bit of a weird day. But things wouldn't slip too far out of whack. Where things slipped out of whack immediately in South Korea. Firstly because I didn't like Seoul when I first got there, you know. It's just like I didn't know how to get to the mountains yet. All I could see was city all around me. And the way it's just fun to walk around a city in Japan, you can just walk around anywhere. And basically it's that way in Busan too. If I just 5:00 pick a neighborhood and walk around, I'm like, yeah, this is nice. I like this. Where Seoul is just not like that. Seoul walking around is like, you better have somewhere to get to because it was polluted in the winter and the city is just filled with garbage and it just sucked. And it's like, well whatever. So I was kind of just like rebelling. I kind of rebelled against Seoul in the sense of fuck this. I'm just gonna stay inside and edit podcasts and do coffee shop work. And I'm not gonna explore because there's no way there seem to be nowhere to go. You know, it took a while for me to crack that nut of finding the mountains. So I was like, fuck it then. I guess I'll just have a different kind of visit. I'll just have a visit where I stay in my Airbnb all the time, treat it like a writers or treat or something. Go to coffee shops every day. That's just what I'll do until I figure out what I'm, you know, what the next step is. So immediately, I just started staying up all night right away. Like the first night I was in South Korea. I think I stayed up till five in the morning. And then, you know, once I got my fucking head together and learned what was going on a bit, got back to my nice life of, you know, at least a day on day off. One day exploring mountains and trying to figure out how to scale the heights of Bukansen or whatever. And then the next day, just stay in, stay home, go to a coffee shop. So I wasn't waking up at nine like I was in Japan. But I at least settled into a pretty good like 11, 12, you know, type of thing. And then the days were getting longer because of summer. So it all kind of just shifted. It was all about the same, whatever, not that bad. Then I guess things really went to shit that day with that pollution that hit at this point, like a week and a half ago, where it was just like so crushing and so demoralizing that it was the worst pollution yet in beautiful Busan. And I was like, oh, no, Busan's not the salvation I thought it was. If anything, if you're here at the wrong time, it's even worse. Well, it's not. I'm sure Seoul was just as bad, but it just sucked, you know, for like the majority of the week, you couldn't go outside. And I let everything go to shit again. And I just haven't recovered from that at all. And like yesterday, I tried to go to bed early, quote unquote, which was like two in the morning. And I just couldn't. I just can't do it. My body will not. It does not recognize normal hours. I was up till six. Just nothing I could do. I've been waking up at like two or three in the afternoon. It's just like ludicrous. And it's sort of like kind of whatever, you know, if that's how it's going to be, that's how it's going to be. Like it doesn't matter. There's an upside to it, you know, there's you get to see both sides of the day. You get to go outside in the day and see the beautiful daytime shit. And then you get to see the nighttime shit, which was one of the things that was so nice about Japan in the winter was getting both sides because you wake up and you have an afternoon of daytime. And then it's dark by five p.m. and you get all the nighttime stuff. So in order to do that, this time of year, now that it's the very end of April, you do have to get started later in the day or you won't see the darkness, you know, it takes a while. It's pretty late by the time it gets dark these days. So kind of it doesn't matter who the fuck cares. Again, I don't have responsibilities. I'm just a weird vagrant. It doesn't matter. I guess it's just again, like I was saying in Jetchon, the worry is that I got to travel next week. And how can I do that when I got to get up early in the morning and get out of an air B and B and then spend all day going to an airport and flying and then a bus and like all this stuff. Oh no, you know, it's going to be so bad. So that's where I just don't know. It's like I guess, I guess the responsible thing is to try to pull my sleep schedule back to some sense of normalcy just so that travel day is not terrible. And then I'll be on Jeju for six weeks and I guess I could just let it go to shit again. Who cares? And I just don't know. I just don't know if it's worth it. I don't know if it's worth the attempt because like today, like this is just how ludicrous it is that I woke up at noon and it felt like the middle of the night. It felt brutal. It felt like I was waking up at 5 a.m. I was just like, I cannot get up right now. I just can't. This is going to be the worst. But it's like it's it's noon. You piece of garbage. It's noon. You can't get up at noon. What's wrong with you? So I made myself get up and I made myself head out here. And like I guess this is all I can do because that's the other thing. If I try to go to bed early, one of my superpowers of my terrible sleep is if I take a 20 minute cat nap, I'm good. 20 minutes is like a whole night sleep in a weird way. Like I'll just stay up again for the next fucking seven hours. If I took a fucking 20 minute nap, which can be handy, but the downside to that is if I try to go to bed, like when I try to go to bed at fucking two in the morning, that's the problem is that I'll sleep for 20 minutes 10:00 and then wake up in my internal clock. It's like, all right, get back at it. And it's like, fuck you. As whole is 230 in the morning. Go to bed, but I just can't. I just can't do it. So I could just force myself, force myself every day, wake up at noon, wake up at 1130, wake up at 11, wake up at 10, get myself back to some kind of sensible thing. And then eventually my body will just have to adapt because it'll have no choice if I just force it to wake up at a reasonable time every day. But where I don't know if that's worth it is that it just wrecks the day. It just wrecks it. Like today, now that I'm here, I feel great now. Once I got to the ocean and you smell the sea air and now that I'm here and I'm on the beach and I'm like, yes, yes, I feel fine. I feel great. But the whole journey here, God, it's just the weirdest feeling because being exhausted, like it's tough to sit at a desk and work at a computer and it's just like, boof. But one thing I like about walking around and hiking around and doing physical stuff, it doesn't matter so much if you're tired. Your body will just just push through it and it doesn't feel like you're tired. I tend to find so maybe that's one reason I like going out and walking so much because if I'm going to be a chronically bad sleeper sitting at a desk, you're aware all day of what a bad sleeper you are going out for a hike, you're just kind of not aware. My body seems to get into balance. However, today, when I'm like extra super duper tired, then it's a weird thing because once I get out and I start walking and I start moving physically, I don't feel tired, but my brain, my brain just cannot deny the reality and the way what happens to me because it's been happening like crazy today is that I just get in a bad mood and what happened today specifically is, you know, when you, you know, they call it the spirit of the stairway, let's put it this calie where you think about like, oh, I wish I had said that or I wish I had said this and you think back to like arguments you had with people and oh, I wish I could have said this. That's been kind of happening, but not with anything real. My brain just keeps inventing arguments with people who don't exist about nothing and then just gets caught in this trap of me running the argument through my head and it's just so exhausting because that's been happening all day and it just won't stop. You know, it's like if you're in the shower and you're just having some weird random thought imagining something that's a bit annoying, but then you shake it off, that's been happening all day and I can't shake it off, it just won't stop. And it's so stupid, like at least one of them, I was just on the subway imagining, I was imagining that I was talking to someone about the pollution in South Korea and in my imagination, I brought up the pollution and this handsome person was like, I don't know, I was visiting in January and I didn't have any troubles and then I go in this whole protracted fantasy for the next 10 minutes where I'm imagining just getting upset at them, like why the fuck would you say that? I'm trying to tell people something useful, I'm trying to tell people something they need to know and you're just undermining me because you're one stupid fucking experience, you know, which you can just look it up. What you're saying is factually untrue. Why are you undermining this? And I don't realize that I'm caught in this trap for like minutes and minutes and minutes till I realize like, why am I I am so miserable having this phantom conversation with no one about nothing? Why won't my brain stop? And like I'm so tired that I don't even realize I'm doing it till I've been doing it and it's just so mentally exhausting and awful. But at least that would be like something that relates to my life. Then I started imagining there's this, you know, the card game magic, the gathering, there was this magic, the gathering set they put out that was based on detective tropes which is an odd fit anyway because it's like a fantasy card game. So it was not a very well-liked set and it didn't sell very well but I was imagining that I worked at that company and I was like in a meeting about how bad that set sold and how poorly received it was and I'm like yelling at a guy of like look at this, look at this like elemental being that you put a fucking A Fedora on. Because he's supposed to be a detective? Why the fuck would an elemental being that doesn't wear clothes have a goddamn Fedora? What did you think was going to happen, idiot? 15:00 Why did you think anyone would like this? Why did you think anyone would buy this? And again, minutes and minutes and minutes on end that I'm in the middle of like this argument in a boardroom. Before my brain finally realizes what it's doing to itself, like I'm eating myself alive. It's like you're just making your whole day so miserable about nothing. And I feel like these examples, they're kind of funny now that I'm on the beach and I'm feeling good. And it's like, yeah, this is funny. Can you believe how my sleep deprived brain, like why is it doing this? This is so stupid. But it's not funny at the time. It's not funny when this is happening for fucking hours. The entire afternoon is just ruined by this. So that's where I feel like I'm stuck in the middle of, yeah, I should just keep getting up earlier and earlier and just force my body back into some kind of sensible routine. But if the price I have to pay is that my entire final week in Busan is just miserable because I'm fucking exhausted every day, because it's going to take a while, you know, for my body to acclimate to any fucking degree with getting up early. I don't know, like I just don't know what to do. It's like maybe I should just wallow in the crap units.

Maybe I should just continue to let my sleep schedule just be shit because then my travel day is going to be bad, but at least all the other days will be fun. But I don't think so. I think ultimately I do need to try to prioritize the travel day because that's the day where things matter. That's the day where I actually need to, you know, I need to get all my stuff and have all my things packed and travel to the airport and get on a flight and go somewhere I've never been before.

That's just, you know, does it really matter? If I'm exhausted walking around Busan, not really, nothing bad's going to happen to me here. But on travel days, you know, it probably is a bit important that I be not exhausted, that I kind of have a bit of sharpness. And yeah, this exact same thing happened in Jeju and I got so lucky. I don't know how, but I just, I actually fell asleep and I actually had a decent night sleep. And I mean, I still had all these plans for my train ride to Busan. Like, oh, I'm going to work on this and work on that and read this book and do this thing. And I didn't. I was still tired and I still just like had fit full maps the entire way. But it could have been a lot worse. So yeah, I don't know. I don't know what the point of any of that is. That's just what's been going on lately. And it's just funny that, you know, I think my body, it's pretty well acclimated to being a bit tired all the time because I just am a bit tired all the time. And like I was saying, as long as I'm hiking around and doing stuff, I seem to be able to just kind of work past it or not really notice it and it's fine. But yeah, when I'm extra tired, man, it's what a strange like, you know, pressure release valve. Why am I constantly inventing fake arguments and then falling deep into them like it's a well that goes to the center of the earth. It's not like a brief passing thought. It's just like minutes and minutes and minutes on end of this fucking conversation about nothing where I'm just arguing with somebody about something that I don't even care about.

It's fucking weird as fuck. But yeah, I mean, there's just there's stages to having a backward fucked up sleep schedule and going to bed at 6 a.m. I mean, one day I stayed up till 10. One of the pollution days, 10 in the morning, but staying up till 6 a.m. and waking up at two or three in the afternoon is just not acceptable behavior. That's insane. Then if I have to get up at, you know, 9 a.m. on the travel day, I mean, at that point, I don't know. Uh-oh, now I'm having a thought, what if I just reverse my sleep schedule? What if I just push through? Uh-oh, uh-oh, now I'm thinking about that.

What if I just stay up all night? What if the day before I travel, I sleep until 3 in the afternoon and I just stay up all night and then travel?

Uh-oh, that's sounding like it's actually not the worst idea. Cause one nice thing, an upside to bring up is, uh, now that I've been around a bit and I've been from Jetshon and I went from Jetshon back to Seoul, cause then I had to go from Seoul to, uh, to here to Busan and like, I've done enough traveling on the trains. And I got my little T-Money card and I took a bus in Jetshon even so I know how buses work and I looked into it already of like, I know how to get to the airport from here. It's very easy. I have a little one hour flight to Jeju and then I'm going down to, uh, the city at the south of Jeju. It starts with an S. 20:00 So that's like an hour on the bus from the airport, but apparently there's buses that run all day, you know, cause like, there's no subways on Jeju. It's all buses, so it should be very easy to figure out where I'm going and make sure I get all that sorted. Like the plus side is, public transport is so good in South Korea and I find it so easy and I've done it enough that I'm really not too nervous about to this travel day, cause I just, uh, even watching train to Busan the other day. I can't remember specifically what stations they filmed that, but when they claimed they were at Seoul station, I believed it, cause it just looked the same. And they stopped at a station halfway through that movie that looks exactly like an exactly the same size and the same shape and the same design as the station in Jeju. I think just because it's a relatively small country with tons and tons and tons of public transit, I think it's just uniform. I think all the train stations in South Korea probably look about the same, they have a uniform look. So they all look the same, they all function the same, cause even if you take like a greyhound bus or something in like the States, like, you know, just every bus station is a little different. Every city is laid out a little different, you never quite know where you're going to get spit out, you never quite know, you know, like public transit in North America is a pain at best. Here, it's just so easy. So I don't think it's going to be a tough travel day and even if I'm super exhausted, I mean, I'm sure it'll be fine.

But yeah, dog, what the fuck, what if I just stay up all night? Oh my god, that's actually not insane.

That's like, like what's more insane? Struggling to fall asleep at 2 a.m., and then if I'm lucky, I'll fall asleep at 4 a.m., and then I gotta wake up at 9 a.m., and if I'm unlucky, I'll be up till 6 and then wake up at 9. Or, just stay up all night.

The toughest part is going to be that I got to leave the Airbnb by 10, and it's a very short ride to the airport, and I think my flight doesn't leave till like 4 p.m. So I've just got a whole afternoon in the airport, but I mean, again, that's not a bad thing. That's a good thing. More time in the airport, the better. Take everything easy. Make sure you're not rushed and stressed. I don't know, I don't know. I got a week to figure this out. I'm going to think about it, but it just seems so impossible. Like I'm trying to pull the emergency brake on a runaway train, on a barreling train. It's not going to happen. It's not going to work, and it's going to make my whole week miserable. What if... What if I just say, fuck the world, and I just start staying up all night on purpose? I mean, I'm saying it out loud, and it doesn't sound crazy. You know, it's one value to these podcasts. You say stuff out loud, and then when I hear it back, and it's like, oh, that doesn't make sense. That's not a good plan. When you say something out loud, sometimes you realize, like, no, no, no, why did I think that? I mean, it's a weird plan. It's a weird plan to stay up all night, but the other plan, the plan of just trying to get up early, it's just not going to happen. It's just not physically possible. My body and my brain just don't work that way.

Anyway, this beach is the fucking best. It's a little after five o'clock now. Sun's going down. It's a little overcast today. But yeah, I think I'm just going to keep walking. This same right walk along the beach, and then up to the Muntan Trail. Go through the trail while it's delight out, because yeah, I didn't really enjoy it in the dark very much. Just keep on amosy, and keep wandering up to the next crescent.

Go up to the other cool beach. Whose name is on the tip of my tongue, but I can't remember. It is...

Oh yeah, probably Song John, right? Because Song John is the name of the station.

Yeah, that beach actually does not have... the name is not in English. But anyway, thanks for listening to that ramble. I think I actually... I think I actually sorted out a situation in my own brain. That's nice. That's good.

There's a guy with a metal detector. I haven't seen anybody do metal detector stuff in years and years and years. I feel like that used to be more of a popular thing back in the day.

Anyway, staying up all night plan. Not the worst. Not the worst. I guess we'll see. I guess we'll see.

Maybe I should just not try to do anything this week. 25:00 Don't try to go to bed early, but don't try to stay up all night either. Just don't think about it. Just do whatever, who the fuck cares. And then we'll just see where we're at next week when travel time hits. Maybe that's...

You know, just don't fight. Just to let things be as they are.

And then worst case scenario. Yeah, no. If it is all shitty on travel day and I'm all tired. Whatever. Whatever. It's modern day travel. And it's not like one of these like horrifying 31 hour flights back home. It has no big problem. It has no big deal.

Oh, this... This big sand sculpture that I've been walking past every time I met this beach. There's like a bunch of areas set up for other sculptures that I guess they'll probably work on throughout the summer. So far, there's really only this one. But it keeps getting bigger and bigger. I don't know what specific building it is, but it's really big. But it's got lights in it now. They put little lights in the sand sculpture. Pretty fucking cool.

Alright, it's the next day. I'm not quite sure how I slipped into this. I was like, hey, I could give an update on my sleep schedule. But it's like, why am I talking about this anyway? Who the fuck cares? You know, like it could be an offhand comment. Like it was in Japan sometimes. Like, ooh, I was up all night. But alright, let's go explore an neighborhood. I guess it's just because that was what was on my mind yesterday. Because I was like really tired yesterday. And it was like tired enough that it was weird that I was having those weird little like argument fantasies. And like, I don't know, I was like out of my mind. So I guess I'll update it. But this is kind of weird. Because I don't know, I guess like this is like one of these... I mean, slice of life is the best term, I guess. But, you know, this podcast is kind of mundane sometimes. Kind of boring sometimes. Kind of aimless and pointless in general. But, you know, I hope that it's mostly just like... I know how lucky I am that I can just travel around and just put her around places and check things out. So, you know, the least I can do is recognize that's like a fun thing to do and present it that way. Not just complain about every little thing. But, you know, I'll just talk a little bit more about sleep stuff. But I guess there's no point in dwelling on it. Like, it's so easy to fall into that, I guess, if just like... I don't know, it's weird. I mean, this whole concept is like... Obviously, sort of self-absorbed, right, or else, why would I do this? You know, I gotta think that it's interesting on some level or that somebody might care about what I think while I'm wandering around or why would I do it. But there's no way anybody cares about like, oh no. Especially since like, by the time you hear this, it'll be long over. But let's just, again, not dwell on it, but I'll just wrap up what I was saying yesterday. Coming up with these wild plans of like, I'm trying to... Trying to steer. It's like I'm grabbing the steering wheel and just trying to force my sleep schedule to stay in a proper lane so I don't crash when it's time to... To travel to Jeju next week, because I've just been staying up all night. Then I had the wild idea like, maybe I should just go the other way. Maybe I should try to flip-flop and just stay up all night on purpose. So then last night, it was like 1.30 in the morning. I was just dead exhausted and I just went to bed and I'm like, ah, what was all that yammering about? This is no worry. I'll just go to sleep right now and everything will be fine. But then what happened is exactly what I was saying always happens. I slept for half an hour. I woke up and it's like, uh-oh. Whoops. Whoopsie Daisy. Now my body and my brain thinks it's the next day or something. And, uh, it's up till 6 in the morning and it's like, fuck. So then I was thinking like, yeah, you know, it seems so irresponsible. It seems so insane to just stay up all night. But maybe. But then that's easier said than done too, because, uh, it's not that easy to just sleep in all day. People start like vacuuming at my Airbnb and cleaning up and stuff and, you know, I ended up waking up around noon or so. So just kind of in limbo.

But then I came up with, you know, I guess like part of it, if you've never had sleep problems, a big problem with it is the, uh, the stress of not being able to sleep. Like you get wound up because you can't go to sleep. And like whenever I had jobs, oh my god, just the worst, like just knowing or school, knowing you had to get up the next morning and, you know, it's getting later and later. It makes it even harder to fall asleep because you're just so stressed out about how bad things are going to be the next day. It made me remember like when I worked, uh, I mean like working as a film projectionist was pretty good because, uh, weird hours, you know, staying up late. 30:00 But even when I worked as a barista, I was at this 24 hour coffee shop and, uh, I really, that really suited me the best where I would just flip flop around between the 3pm to 11pm shift and then sometimes the 11pm to 7am shift. And since it wasn't consistent and it was always more or less the middle of the night either way, it was nice because there was no point in trying to establish a sleep schedule. That's what worked the best for me. If I'm not going to have a proper sleep schedule anyway, then yeah, fuck it. Just get a job where, uh, it's not helpful to have one. And that was, that was nice. And then once in a while, I'd get put on the 7am to 3pm shift and that was just miserable. I had to start requesting like, just please don't put me on that one. I'll do anything else. I'll be your graveyard guy. I'll be flexible. I'll do anything. I'll work as many or as few days as you want. I'll do whatever. I just can't get, get up at 6am to go to work. I can't do it. But I was thinking that maybe I could tie in because that's part of the stress, I guess. I'm pre-eminently stressed about the travel day next week because I got to get up at this time that is very early for me. And just because of the stress of not being able to sleep, even if I only had to wake up at 9am to get out of my Airbnb by 10, that's not how my brain works. I'm going to wake up at 6.30 in the morning and it's just going to be brutal. But it's really not that bad of a day. It's an hour to get to the airport. It's an hour flight to Jeju and it's about an hour on the bus to get to Segwipo, whatever the city's called to haven't learned the name yet.

But there is a long break in the middle where my flight doesn't leave till 4pm and I'm going to end up being at the airport, you know, by noon. But then I realized maybe I can just apply what I learned on this trip at the Calgary Airport. How I stayed there all night and it was great and it was very easy to sleep at the airport. A lot easier than I expected. Like I just need a plan. I need to have some idea of what I'm going to do that day that will save me. I'm going to go to sleep from my terrible lack of sleep and I realized like if I get there at noon and my flight doesn't leave till 4pm, again the airport is always sneaky. It seems like there's a lot more time than there is.

That sounds like I got 4 hours to do nothing. But having to prepare for the flight and just, you know, time gets eaten up here and there, it's probably going to be more like a solid 2 hours that I'll just be doing nothing. But why don't I just pull out my little bag, how, you know, my bags, my bags within bags is how I pack stuff. So I've got one bag that's all just clothing and that's what I used as a pillow in Calgary. When I get to the airport, why don't I just pull out that little bag, use it as a pillow and just take a fucking nap. Why don't I just nap for 2 hours in the afternoon and the airport? I just don't think that's something I would have done. But now I think I've learned to like, yeah, that's fine. Just do that. No one's going to care. And it might be comfy, it might be fun, it might be nice, nice little airport sleep. I don't know, it just takes away that stress. I'm like, yes, so what if I am tired that day? Who the shit cares? Who the fuck cares, man? Take a nap at the airport. The airport is all things to all people. It's great. It's like a little, it's like a little apartment. It's like a huge apartment. You just live there when you have a ticket.

But anyway, there we go. Sleep update. Let us never speak of it again or only in very passing quick updates if it ever is applicable.

Let's talk about fucking Busan. So my favorite, definite favorite area in Busan for sure has been this walk from Hyundai Beach up to Sangjan Beach on the South Eastern corner of Busan. I just keep coming back here. So yesterday I walked, I did that walk and it got more and more overcast and it started raining, but I just didn't even care. I had my little rain resistant jacket and it's just so pretty. The shoreline is just so nice. On a sunny day, it's nice, but on a rainy day, it's also nice. I didn't mind I was getting rained on. It just felt nice. What a nice walk. And I got here to Sangjan and I got on the train.

Took the train back home and it's just like, ah, then I was thinking today because I noticed when I was a couple stations up from here, these labels that are all over the place, orange and blue. And I don't know if the orange and blue route are different routes or if it's just orange is north and blue is south or whatever if it's just one route. But there'd be these little signs everywhere that then I started noticing down in this area too and I realized it's a whole coastal walk. You can follow the orange and blue and it's like either a sign or they'll just be ribbons, but it's always those colors and they have little symbols and stuff. 35:00 I realized like there, who knows how far up that goes, but there is a coastal walk that definitely gets weird and gets difficult and starts taking you up through weird mountains. And at certain points, you seem to just need to walk along the highway, along the street or whatever on a sidewalk. So it's not that bad, but I thought maybe I'd do that today. Just come here to Songjohn where I'm right now and just just follow farther up, just try to connect the dots because I've already been to the next two stations north of here. Maybe I should just go for a hike, but because of all this weird sleepy bullshit and trying to sleep in as long as I can and just the weirdness, I feel fine today, I slept fine. But it took me so long to get going that it's like 5 p.m. by the time I get here and it is like 14 and a half kilometers to the next station where the walk from Hyundai to Songjohn, it's only like three and a half. So it's way, way, way further. And I have seen bits and pieces of it and I started walking up that way and it's like, yeah, you just can't stay along the coast. I'm just going to have to walk on streets and then up through a weird mountain perhaps and it's going to get dark and I'm not going to have time. And it's just like this just isn't going to work. It's just not going to work. So instead I'm just walking back. I met Songjohn beach right now. Sun is still up, but it's going down. It's windy, a lot of waves, so there's tons of surfers. The good old surfers, but it's just something so nice about just walking along next to the surfers, watching everybody surf. And yeah, I mean, I guess I'm just going to walk back down this fucking way again, make my way to the Mermaid statue. I don't know, I mean, I think this is just very clearly my current winner for Busan. I just keep coming back here over and over and just walking it up and down and up and down.

Because I guess that's the other thing with the sleep schedule slipping. The only real downside is it's fine in the city. It's nice. You know, walking along, everything gets dark, all the lights come on, everything's pretty. It's only hiking in the mountains. I mean, I had the same problem in Japan. If you're in the city and it gets dark, that's great. You know, it's a different experience. It's just a different version of the city. But if you're in the mountains and it gets dark, you are fucked with a capital fucked.

But I think that's all right. You know, I've done an awful lot of mountain hiking here in South Korea, and I do love it. But whatever, I don't need to do more. It's fine. Again, it's just not worth trying to force myself to wake up early just so I can go to like Yangsan or something and hike up a different mountain.

Like whatever. I guess I'm just in this kind of weird little limbo where it's just like maybe the right answer right now is just to do nothing. Don't try to get up early because why bother? It's just going to make you miserable. Don't try to sleep in because, you know, people are trying to vacuum and clean up the Airbnb and trying to sleep through it is just going to make you miserable. Just do neither thing. Just do nothing. Just let everything be as it is. Can't really explore new places. Can't go find a new mountain and go try to hike up it because it's too late in the day and it's going to get dark. Then just don't. Just go back to the places that you thought were cool. Just walk them again. Who cares? Fuck it. There certainly reaches a point where vacationing and exploring a new place can become not fun anymore if you just like make it stressful for no good reason. Which again, I know this is just I'm in a weird situation. This whole thing is different than how most people travel. Most people their whole trip is like that. Here's the itinerary. Here's all the places we're going to go. Ironically half of the time gets eaten up with traveling because they people go to so many places for such short amount of times. I don't know that that's the greatest approach, but hey, you know, people got to do what they got to do. They got different lives. So I mean, I'm on just like the slow motion version of that. Just stretched out like taffy. Just been in Asia for many, many months. But I think maybe it is just a good time, especially on just this final week in Busan, just to kind of give up. Just to stop exploring, stop trying to do stuff, stop trying to have a sleep schedule that allows me to go explore more places like, yeah, who cares? Whatever. Like I think I'm at the point where I'm just making myself unhappy by trying all this shit. Now it's just like, yeah, just go back to the place you were already at before or heck, don't even just go to a coffee shop. Just do nothing. How about that? The vacation from the vacation, I guess, is like at the point that I'm at now.