I am now an author!

I am now a published author! As most of you know now I am fairly heavily involved with CS (www.couchsurfing.org) and I found out a guy who is a member there is a writer/publisher and he was making a book of 101 travel stories from different travelers. I submitted mine and got chosen to be in the book! Here is my story :) I will let you know when it is published (Most of the proceeds of the book sales go to an African Water Charity, so buy the book!)

Life as we know it

by Tyler Horton

As I think over my life and all of my many travels to over 17+ countries, two things jump instantly in my mind. These are times when time itself has seemed to stop for me. I was not on top of Macchu Picchu or at Ankowat (both of which I have been too) but, I was in very ordinary places doing very ordinary things.

I was living and working for a year in Australia in 2009/2010. One day I randomly met a British girl and we really got along well. So, on my day off we decided to go to Hyde Park in Sydney and lay on the grass to feed the birds. Think about your own life and ask yourself how many times in your life have you taken the time to slow down enough to just totally relax and feed the birds?

In that moment when we were feeding the birds time slopped. Nothing else mattered, we were both totally content with everything around us. I remember feeling such a wave of peace come over me that I never wanted it to end. Unfortunately all good things must come to an end. As the sun faded that day we left the park and returned back to our lives. I was sad because I thought I would never get to feel those feelings again. Lucky for me it happened once more.

A year later I was living and working in Auckland,New Zealand and I was walking down Queen St at 9pm. I had somewhere to be and I was in a hurry but I suddenly heard two street performers across the street from each other. One guy was playing Jimi Hendrix “The Wind Cries Mary” and the other was a gorgeous girl playing something on the cello right then and there I stopped, time stopped. I totally forget where I was going or what I needed to do. The only thing that matter in my life was listening to them play music. I once again felt that total peace and everything was good in the world. Once they stopped playing the moment was over. I was back to normal life again. Ever since then I have been searching for that feeling of total peace but I have yet to find it again. This was not an adventure or adrenaline story. This was not a story of something beautiful or amazing I have seen. But, this was a story of how sometimes, just sometimes you can be reminded of how amazing life can be when you are traveling. When you are at home wrapped up in your own life I think you are way too busy to stop and listen to music or feed the birds. You have way too much going on to really appreciate life. The exact opposite is true when you are traveling. I hope that each one of you who reads this will stop to feed the birds somewhere. Stop trying to control life and let it control you just for a brief moment in time. You wont regret it.