“The Dead Hours?” I hear you say. It’s not a macabre notion, I promise. I’ve already written about the solitude that is afforded by solo travel, but I didn’t talk about the dead hours; the hours when your network of humans are in peaceful slumber on the other side of the world, and you’re in raptures over what you’re seeing on your travels.

It really wasn’t something I had considered that much before I moved here. I never thought how the vast time difference between Australia and the UK would feel like I was living in two worlds. Right now, the dead hours for me are between 2:00 – 10:00pm. It’s these dead hours that made me think about how in general, we’ve come to view our experiences that we have.

Instantaneous technology has enabled us to share these candid moments with each other with a tap of a finger. There have been many moments in the past few months that I’ve been dying to just call my family or one of my friends back home to just share that moment. Most of the times its because it is something that I know they’ll love: whether it be Henry VIII’s table on the wall in Winchester, or when I’m standing at the cliff’s edge at Land’s End fanning away flying sea foam during Storm Doris.

But there is also another reason: that we do not want to feel alone in that moment. When we travel somewhere and we have moments that cause whirrings in our souls and in our hearts, we want someone to witness what we are seeing, what we are feeling. This reason is the one that keeps niggling. Why do we need such concrete and public approval and gratification of experiences that we chose to undertake and embark upon ourselves?

Is it that fear that if it has not been recorded and shared, that it didn’t happen, or at the least somewhat less of an experience? I’ve thought about this and if it has affected my experiences during ‘the dead hours’ of the day so far. And I think it has to a certain point.

The Isolation

I’ve felt ‘the dead hours’ more in times when I’m doing things that I wouldn’t do often solo. When I’m out and having a late lunch somewhere. I suddenly feel surrounded by people out with their partners, their friends, their family, their children. All eating, laughing, talking about the everyday mundane things you take for granted when you are surrounded by your own ‘network of humans’. I sit there, observing them, whilst making mental notes about the delightful ravioli on my plate; whilst checking the phone to see if anyone is still up at midnight in Melbourne.

The core of the reason why I came here was to fill myself with experiences. Ones that filled me personally up as a human being, that contented the whispers of my soul. That give me my own story. A deeply personal experience, that would serve me. So why do I feel so compared to share it still? If this was my intention, why do I feel the physicality of ‘the dead hours’ so greatly at times?

I’m guessing there are some of you that are reading this that have been experiencing this for years, and it has become your normality, you’re waking reality day in day out. But for me, it’s still a new way of thinking. These ‘dead hours’ are making me think about how I interact with my surroundings; new and old. For a trip and life change that was to garner more answers, I’m definitely accruing quite the list of questions of myself. But they will all lead somewhere at some point and will make sense one day. In the meantime, I’ll just keep talking and writing about them!