Getting Yourself Out of A Funk

We had been in a funk. For days we had been holed up reading books. First in Lake Titicaca and then back in La Paz. We hadn’t really left our respective compounds except for two or three trips to get more white wine or avocados for guacamole. And while this Caliguaen life of leisure was enjoyable for a short amount of time (we each read about two books in four days) it made us both feel kind of aimless and slothlike.

What are we doing in South America again? We could be reading books at my mom’s house for free!

I think we had too much of a good thing. We were cooped up. Stir crazy. We needed exercise.

The next day we took a walk to the valley of the moon, a weird lunar landscape of eroded earth and hoodoos. It was okay. Neither of us had huge expectations for it. And it was only a short trip (a few hours max).

But it was just what we needed. Fresh air, sun, exercise.

It was that first small step you need to take when you need to get yourself out of a funk.

The next day we would be back to normal (and maybe then some). We were out for 12+ hours. We rode the city’s new gondola, took a walking tour of La Paz, went on a wild goose chase for food that landed us in a Soviet style bakery, and ended the night at a five course tasting menu at a community project called Gustu run by the owner of Noma. I also took a board meeting call from a Bolivian coffee shop and stumbled into a tour agency where i signed up to climb a 20,000 foot mountain today.

It seems as if the pendulum has swung. Inertia is a helluva thing.