Newsletter Number Four

Crazy football fans and doubts about the unknown road

Hi all,

Hope you’re all keeping well. We’re over halfway through the current lockdown now so hopefully we’ve turned a corner. It feels like it around town in some small way, a general feeling of positivity seems to be in the air in spite of the circumstances. A tree has gone up in the square, earlier than usual I think (I’m not too sure on that), though no-one’s going to complain. I just hope it survives the wind. There seems to be a buzz of positivity around the town, with friendly faces greeting each other from behind masks, and I hope it’s not just me that’s optimistic for the future, in spite of the circumstances.

Even though it feels like we’re all stuck to the one spot now, things are changing around us, whether we see them or not. Or maybe it’s the fact that we’re changing, despite being stuck in our little spots (or within a 5km radius of them). I’ve a feeling the world will look a bit different in December anyway, even if it seems the same at first. This Christmas will be a first for many of us anyway. Who knows, maybe for the better?

And therefore it’s impossible for these changes not to be reflected here. The main one is that there are just a couple of new articles, one of which of course is another travel one. I’ve been trying to juggle a lot of different topics between general well-being and psychology, surf trips, books and travel articles, and have a feeling it’s getting a bit confusing. It’s also bogging me down a bit, forcing me to switch attention between lots of different things and not giving any of them as much as they need or deserve. And so I’ve decided not to force an extra book discussion, or surfing article (mainly because I can’t go surfing these days, and I’d like those articles to be rooted in something that actually happened rather than abstract theorising).

I think the general gist of this newsletter has been established though, so expect the same themes and topics in the future. For now I’m going to concentrate on writing better articles rather than bombarding you with listed series for the sake of it. It probably puts less pressure on all of us.

In this week’s travel article we leave Ba Be (feels like I’ve been there forever) and go back in time a few short days to see how I got there in the first place. It’s the start of a road trip, but although that sounds like an exciting thing to look forward to, the open-ended freedom of choice offered by a one-way ticket to nowhere comes a certain amount of anxiety and doubt. Especially when you’ve to drive for two hours in the dark in the lashing rain. There’s also some sketchy exploration and good old-fashioned Vietnamese hospitality.

This was the start of a road trip I took solo through the north Vietnamese mountains a couple of weeks before I left the place for good. Over the next few weeks I’ll be putting up some of the stories from that trip. I hope it sheds some light on what exactly is going through someone’s head when they embark on such a thing, as well as painting a decent picture of what the places I’ve been to are like.

In other news, we had a football match. I sent out that article as some energising reading material just before throw-in, but here it is again just in case. Regardless of your allegiances, I hope it remains relevant for the rest of the year and beyond. I’ve wanted to get around to writing more directly about the well-being aspect of being a Mayo football supporter (as oxymoronic as that sounds), and I did it the only way I thought appropriate by going on a completely one-sided and biased rant. I think it captures some of the real psychology of being a football fan, and some of why it’s good for your well-being, in ways that aren’t so easy to measure. It’s not all about the football.

Thanks, stay safe, and comments and shares appreciated as always.

Gav

P.S. Up Mayo