Welcome back, dear reader, after this brief hiatus. In the interest of making this blog manageable for the both of us I’m going to run through a quick (by my standards) summary of most of the past year and a half, with a bit more detail about what I’m up to now and going forward. Let’s get to it! [Editor’s note: I failed to make this brief.]

Wrapping up Amed

My 2024 stay in Amed ended quite well. I finished up the coaching program and was able to set a new personal best, getting past the problem that had been stopping me. I would have loved to repeat some deeper dives and/or try to explore a bit further, but I ended up getting a cold and had to leave things where they were for the time being. After I recovered I started looking around for a job, and was able to get a foot in the door at Apneista, the oldest school in town, where I’d been doing my self-directed training. After a short trial period I left with things a bit uncertain—the trial went well, but there is a limit on the number of foreign work permits the school is allowed to have at any one time, so I had to wait and see if a spot would open up for me.

Visiting the States

At this point it had been a little over two years since I’d been in the US, so it was time for a visit. I wanted to spend enough time to be able to meaningfully catch up with the people I love, so I ended up touring the country for three and a half months. LA, San Diego, the Bay Area, Seattle, the midwest, New York, and Vermont were the main stops on the tour, with perhaps another one or two that aren’t coming to mind right now. I can proudly (or shamefully, depending on your point of view) say that I spent that entire time in people’s spare rooms or on their couches. This, besides just making me feel incredibly cared for, was really nice because it let me enjoy those small everyday moments with people. One of the challenges of catching up after a long time away is breaking through the “let’s list the major events in our lives since we last saw each other” phase to get to the point of just savoring time spent together, and being in people’s homes from when they wake up to when they go to bed is a good way to do that.

I’m not going to try to list all the things I did during this time because, frankly, the things I did are beside the point. The point is that getting to spend time with the people closest to me was an absolute salve for the soul. Just what the doctor ordered. A tall glass of water when you’re wandering through the desert.

If you’ll permit me to wax philosophical for a minute, the past several years have been a transitional period for me, and there’s been a fair bit of soul searching and looking for meaning and all that good shit. This has led me to a central contradiction. It has become crystal clear that one of the most meaningful things in my life are the relationships I have, and the logical conclusion there is that prioritizing those relationships and spending time with those people is the road to happiness. Unfortunately, my whole adult life has also been a gradual realization and acceptance that I can’t stomach living in America or working an office job, among other things. And so, short of convincing everyone I love to start a utopian community on a tropical island somewhere (I’m trying!), I think I will always have to live with this tension, this dissatisfaction, this incompleteness, of seeing the people I love much less than I would like to.

All of that is to say, if you are one of the people who made time in your schedule to see me while I was back, I genuinely do not know how to put into words how much I appreciate it, and how meaningful that time was to me. I hope I made that clear to you at the time, and I hope I’m making it clear again. I’m tearing up just thinking about it now.

One activity I will mention from this US tour was all the kid time, which was an absolute delight. I think it’s very unlikely I’ll have kids of my own, but I do love kids, and I plan to take my role as an uncle (using the broadest possible definition) very seriously. It was amazing to see kiddos I’d known as infants toddling around, it was wonderful to meet new nieces and nephews, and I’m already scheming how I can set my life up so I can be a real uncle and not just a random visitor every ten years.

At some point during the time in the US I got a call from Apneista saying that they’d be able to give me a work visa. Woooooo! So things were lined up—I’d travel until the end of January and then make my way back to Amed to start my job as a full-time freediving instructor. Exactly what I wanted!

Traveling with Mom

The last bit of my time in the US was a very, very special trip I got to go on with my mom. She came out to the west coast for two weeks and we looked at seals and pelicans in San Diego, visited Yosemite for some hiking, and then went to Cabo San Lucas for some SCUBA diving and delicious Mexican food. Hiking and ocean activities are pretty much the central focus of my adult life, but these are not things we really did as a family when I was growing up. It was incredibly special to me to be able to share these things with mom, and to see her overcome a little bit of initial nervousness en route to some gorgeous summits and beautiful reefs. I feel like we picked up a bit of momentum for traveling together on this trip, and I don’t plan to let that momentum dissipate.

Swinging through France

On the way back to Amed I made a quick detour in France. It had been a long time since I’d been back and it was great to catch up with family and friends, and also just to soak up a bit of Frenchness. I really would like to live there again at some point! I spent some time in Paris with family, my cousin Alice being incredibly gracious in hosting me in her tiny apartment. After that I went down to Toulouse, where again a cousin came to the rescue, Julia giving me the run of her beautiful apartment while she stayed with her boyfriend. Toulouse was quite fun, seemed like a really nice-sized city where you’ve got things to do but it’s still very manageable. Lastly I spent a few days in Nice catching up with freediving friends. One of the highlights was wandering in to a Vivian Maier exhibition—check her out, her photos are incredible.

Back to Amed

Finally it was time to get back to Amed and start my new life. I was in a bit of a rough state when I arrived. I’ve been dealing with a gastritis/acid reflux problem that started in the middle of my first long stay in Bali, and after a bit of a reprieve it was back with a vengeance around the time I got to Amed. I experimented with different strategies for calming it down and had a largely useless tangle with the Indonesian healthcare system, all of which played out over a stressful and occasionally scary few months. Thankfully I managed to find a workable routine that let me get through the year, and the stomach gradually improved, though it has plateaued in a state I would describe as “workable but unsustainable”. So that’s something I need to get some real medical attention for in the coming months.

Even still, getting back to Amed felt really good. I distinctly remember a feeling of gratitude and purpose when I got back, driving down the street with Mt Agung looming in the background. After two and a half years of drifting it felt really good to have a job! Don’t get me wrong, I’m better suited than most to not working, but eventually the decision fatigue mounts, as do the questions about purpose and meaning and whatnot. And teaching freediving is something that I really enjoy!

The first 4ish months of the year saw me working a pretty regular schedule, teaching two level 1 courses every week. The courses are two full days, so I was working 4 day weeks, alternating between 1 and 2 days off in between. As expected it took a little time to ramp up, not having dived in months and with the stomach issues I was having, but all in all it wasn’t bad. Eventually I also started teaching level 2, which was another ramp up period. It’s good getting to teach both courses, they’re both fun and challenging and rewarding in different ways.

There’s not too much to report from this period, to be honest. The days and weeks and months all kind of blend together. I found the social scene here a bit tricky for a while—most people are here for only a few weeks to a few months, and they’re pretty much in vacation mode during that time. Having a full time job limited my opportunities to socialize and also drained a lot of energy, so for a while I felt like I was around the social scene but not really a part of it. It always takes me a while to really make friends though, and as the year wore on I spun my little web of connections and deeper friendships.

Vacations

In September it was time for Mom and Phil’s Adventures, Round 2. She made the long trip out here and got a taste of my little village life. After that we went on a sweet trip to Malaysian Borneo to check out lots of wildlife. Orangutans were one of the main highlights, but we also saw an incredible assortment of birds, monkeys, crocodiles, and critters. Some of the landscapes were also spectacular, and once again it was a very special trip.

Having saved up all of my vacation time, I went basically back to back on vacations and at the end of October headed out to the Maldives to freedive with tiger sharks. There is a local island called Fuvahmullah, in the far south, where the fishermen have been cleaning their fish and throwing the guts in the water at the mouth of the harbor for long enough to get the local tiger sharks used to the idea. So now it’s a spot where you can go and swim with handfuls of sharks in a reasonably controlled environment, in nice shallow water, right next to the harbor. We spent 4 days shark diving and it was very cool. They are impressive, graceful, and not as scary as people think. The plan after that was to meet up with my dad and his girlfriend in Singapore, but unfortunately they lost a battle with the stomach gods in Vietnam and had to head home, so we missed each other. Luckily I had had a student from Singapore on a course just a couple of days before so she showed me around a bit, and I basically just ate my way through the city.

When I got back it was November, and my visa was going to finish at the end of January, so I had a decision to make. Ultimately I opted not to renew the visa for another year—this has been a good year, and I got lots of teaching experience, which was exactly what I wanted. If I did another year, though, I think it would mostly just be more of the same. I also realized that, while it does have so much going for it, Amed ultimately isn’t the place for me long term. All of that being the case I decided it was best to leave it while I still love it.

Back to Wandering

Having decided not to renew the question was, “what’s next?”. The general plan for this year is to travel to a bunch of the amazing places in Indonesia/Southeast Asia that I wasn’t able to see while I was working, and then in the second half of the year to leave Asia behind and migrate towards either Europe or Latin America. The first stop was a trip to visit my old neighbors in Thailand, on the island of Koh Phangan. They were some of my best friends in Amed and had moved to Thailand a few months before, so I went to check out their new spot. I had an awesome week and a half there—they were such good hosts, with lots of activities planned, fresh baked bread every other day, and really good vibes. The food in Thailand really is as good as everyone says, so that was great. Although I had really liked my job, getting away let me see how much I had been worrying about always trying to stay healthy, how my ears were doing, what my next course was, etc etc… It was great to just go take a load off.

Most recently I just spent a few weeks in Labuan Bajo, the town which is the gateway to Komodo National Park. Komodo is obviously famous for the dragons, and I did go on a couple of tours to see them. They’re just as impressive as advertised! Though as with most reptiles (and wild animals in general), you mostly just see them doing nothing at all. But, damn, they are big lizards.

What you might not know about Komodo, at least if you’re not a diver, is that it’s a world famous diving destination. The national park is actually a large scattering of islands, mostly uninhabited, and the landscapes above water are just beautiful. Underwater you can find pretty much everyhing: beautiful coral, manta rays, huge eels, fish, sharks, giant clams, you name it. Komodo is also famous for its strong currents, and there are several dive spots where you just play with the current, hanging on for dear life or drifting along watching the reef go by. I had a couple lovely dive days, a couple fun tours, and got to spend lots of time catching up with a friend, all of which was great.

That more or less brings us up to the present day! I’ve been back in Amed for a few days now, catching up with friends and getting some stuff together for my next trip. In a couple of days I’ll be heading to Raja Ampat, which is a large region in West Papua, the far east of Indonesia. Raja is quite remote nad has almost no infrastructure, which has apparently kept it fairly well preserved. It’s once again famous for some of the best diving in the world, incredible reefs, huge schools of fish, and all kinds of large pelagic species. If I’m really lucky there’s a chance I could see an oceanic manta ray, which can apparently get up to 30 feet long and 6500 pounds! Though I guess more typical size is “only” 15 feet.

I’ll be spending about a month out in Raja. First I’ll spend a week on a liveaboard boat with a freediving group, where we’ll go around to lots of different sites to look at stuff while holding our breath. After that I’ll have a little over a week in homestays, where the plan is mostly to relax, maybe try to see some birds of paradise, and do a bit of snorkeling out front of my little bungalow. Finally, I’ve got a 10 night SCUBA liveaboard booked, where we’ll go all around the area looking for cool things to see. I think Raja deserves a bit more explanation and context but I am simply running out of steam at this point (and I can’t imagine many of you will have had the patience to get this far anyway, but thanks if you did!).

So, Raja activities are booked until April 11th, and after that… who knows. I may decide I like it there and go relax at some more homestays for a while. I may come back to Amed and settle in for some freedive training for a bit. I may have to fly through Makassar and decide I’d like to check out Sulawesi, or go back to Komodo when the conditions are better and more of the crazy dive sites are accessible. I also would really like, at some point, to spend some time somewhere where the people don’t speak English at all and try to really get my Indonesian to a conversational level. So the plan is just to see where the wind blows, really.

Eventually I imagine I’ll get a bit tired of drifting and be ready to look for the next thing. I’d like to keep working as a freediving instructor, so depending on the time of year I think I’ll probably just head to either Europe or Latin American and start hanging around freedive schools there until something sticks. But really, who knows! The plan is to have some fun, not worry so much about decisions and the future, and jump at a cool opportunity when it comes up.

If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading! And stay tuned—now that I’m doing cool stuff again there’s a chance I’ll post updates more regularly again.