It has been a big debate for me and a small obstacle of laziness following it. To blog or not to blog, I mean.

On one hand, everyone does it:  people who know how to write and people who don’t, people who have stories to tell and people who think that their “how I spent my day” paragraphs count as an exciting story.  It has become a trend, and to follow a trend, everybody knows, takes you to a place far away from Coolland.

So I guess my first seemingly profound thought I would like to introduce here is what I could call reverse conformism. That is, why shouldn’t I do something just because everybody else does it?

Reverse conformism, my dear numerous (numerous like in three, four maybe) readers, could very beautifully cover any true form of conformism. Just listen: “No, I’m not wearing cowboy boots because everybody else is, I am wearing them because everybody else is but, you see, I don’t care”.

This blog is my cowboy boots. I have finally decided to put them on.

What I have also decided is to purposefully start my blogging experience (you put a word experience next to any other word and it becomes a profound process, a journey of sorts, if you will) by commenting on something that other people would say I am doing at the moment. Although I myself would like to punch or at least verbally offend that very person who has popularised the concept of – drum rolls, drum rolls please – gap year.

(Yes, popularised with an s, because no-one is forcing me to use American-English after all these years.  …If you could only see my maniac-like smile when I write favour labour flavour just like this, in one go which doesn’t make sense. I could proudly – and secretly – compare myself to Nicholson’s character in The Shining, just with a netbook instead of a typewriter)

But so gap year.

My linguistics-loving friends would probably agree with me that what the term implies is a transitory state between two relatively significant periods of one’s life. Well, and I take a deep breath here, not to jump into some improper language right away, I have a couple of problems with that saying.

A gap between what, first of all? School and university, university and “real life”, the fun life and the boring life? If so, gap year then has a rather sad connotation. Take that breath of interesting life NOW, for it is the only time you are able to do so. Yes, you are 20+, and your life will be a smooth downhill from here!

Or, another version: it’s the limbo time between two academic periods which are, of course, the most significant times of your life. Wow, how sad is it to believe that only academic activity is the real deal, that whatever falls in between is not the real thing but a gap instead? Although gap in gap year is just a word, as many other words in any language, it stems out of certain beliefs and attitudes. Screw it, why not to call it awesomeness year, expedited growth year, or when else would I do this? year?

No, it’s a gap year…

Can you see how much of a derogatory term it sounds to me?

Another point worth considering – it is not necessarily a year! As I am continuing my life, why is that time after finishing school, university or…quitting one’s job more special than other years? What if I go to “a foreign place” and stay there? Oh, my dearest Gap Year, none of the words in your name makes sense.

I will try to remember a quote by a lady from the Royal Thai Consulate in Lithuania, hoping that she will never read this and I will never need to get a Thai visa from that institution again. After a short interview with me this summer she uttered something absolutely incredible: Aha, ummm, so you won’t be studying or saving money… A little bit of a wasted year that will be, right? She said with that kind of “yeah, the situation isn’t great, but I understand” look on her face.

Lady, if that is what you are thinking, how many years of YOUR life have you wasted?

So here I am in Thailand, wasting my time.

And let me tell you about how exactly I have been wasting it before, assumingly, I come back to “the real life”. Therefore, what I will be writing here, do not be fooled, is nothing close to reality.