08-22-11 London, UK: 20:42. I am sitting in a small and dimly-lit room. The street outside my window is growing darker, the streetlights glowing brighter. The window is open and the air is cooling for the fall. The music I am listening to is familiar, and that is all tonight’s music needs to be. It is a Monday night in London that started on a Sunday morning in Chicago. I am being held together by the melody and the crisp air.

08-23-11 London, UK: 08:23. I am writing from the breakfast room of the hostel I will be staying at for the next 12 nights. Breakfast here is served from 07:30 to 10:00 and is included in the price of the room. So I am stocking up the best I can. There are several quite healthy options on the menu and I think I should be able to get much of the day’s nutrition from here. I will save some fruit for later and buy some veggies and hummus from somewhere nearby; that should be enough to get me by.

I will get the bodyweight and cardio workouts going today as well. Any more than one day away from them leaves me feeling very uneven. And, well, I just had a several day gap combined with two nights on an exercise mat, one in the seat of a Boeing something-or-other aircraft, and one jet-lagging in a small bed with a big book. So everything in me is fairly upside down and begging for it right now.

It is cool and raining outside this morning and I am liking it very much. Beyond the need for some more involved physical activity, I am feeling not bad today. Yesterday was a struggle. I touched ground somewhere in the 05:00 hour and was never really able to get a grip on things from there. The free internet the hostel was supposed to have seems to have ridden off on a snow-white unicorn and into a rainbow-clad sunset somewhere. So my fairly extreme detachment from all things outside my own mind has been upped some. I should be a little less detached in a couple weeks.

In the meantime, I will keep the journal writing going the best I can and post accumulated updates wherever the internets remain free and accessible. I’ll also of course be posting photos and other non-journal writings throughout.

But more than anything, right now, I just wanted to write to say that I am here; I am in London; I am broke and operating at a deficit; I am quickly gaining a better understanding of humility and happiness; I have abandoned all but the two bags I carried on the plane and their contents, and I am convinced that this will improve the body I carried them on with, and its contents. If I can do it for myself then I can maybe do it for others, and that remains just about the only reason I’ve found to keep breathing.

Today I am going to walk in the rain and look for work and burned buildings. What are you going to do today?

Thanks for reading.

Brian