A deer in my headlights

Two weeks ago I wrote I was going on a camping trip to the south of Taiwan. I went and had an amazing time.

Then 4 days later, another old friend of mine realized he had a few days off for the first time in a year and decided we should go camping again. So I asked my boss and I said yes to myself—and off we went, again.

I mentioned in a Facebook post about some of the wildlife I might encounter, and the topic of seeing a Taiwanese deer came up.

I said I hadn’t seen one before (but perhaps I have inadvertently eaten one—who knows with some of these dishes).

Either way, a few days later while trekking back from the beach through a mystical graveyard in the pitch black of the countryside, I came across this little Bambi in the picture above.

The poor thing was being frightened by some of the nearby farm’s guard dogs—and the prospect of seeing two white foreigner aliens on a confined pathway probably wasn’t on its itinerary that night.

After a bit of maneuvering and Bambi trying to slide through a 2-inch hole in the fence to the left, we convinced her to frolic past us to the right and off to freedom.

It left a mark on me that night.

It’s always amazing to escape the city life (especially in the dense concrete jungles of Asia).

Seeing nature, stars, and combative deer is a great way to cool the senses and wash away any stress.

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After dreaming about the deer and ordering steak (purely coincidentally) for breakfast, I had a few thoughts.

A) I’d love to go camping more frequently

B) Seeing old friends is a great way to get your head outside of the box of structured thinking

C) I want to continue doing these mini-goal-months I’ve been embarking on this year

D) I really enjoy steak

As for point C, it’s lead me to do some weird stuff this year—and I’ve loved every minute of it.

I wrote my first book. Started learning how to draw amusing shit. Learned how to and went gold panning. Started a POD website. Learned everything there is to know about SEO and started perfecting it. And most importantly, and most amusingly, started practicing the craft of writing.

My most recent month-long project was to try a sober month for the first time in 13 years. If you know me IRL you’ll know I have a fondness for socializing over beers.

That may be an understatement.

But either way, I finally figured out how to comfortably and easily accomplish it, and I went 33 days sober to clean out the system and see how it would affect me.

I enjoyed it—whereas I never enjoyed my previous attempts.

And that’s probably why they failed.

But now I know what worked for me and I’ll definitely be doing it again more often.

The goal wasn’t to go sober—that would be damn boring for me. But I did want to reduce the amount, and I’ve certainly succeeded!

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So what are my next month-goal-projects? (I really need to think of a catchy name for this system).

I have a few in mind:

• Write another book or two using non-fiction and humor and my amazingly shitty drawings as the basis

• Go on an extreme diet for 1 month and track all of the results (I’ve been playing with a lot of different ones over the last 2 years—I’m down 70 lbs of fat as a result)

• Walk around the border of Taiwan—a 1,000 km path that’s usually meant for bicyclists. The journey could take 20-40 days for the few people I’ve heard of actually completing it before—which sounds amazing but potentially frustrating.

I’m always open to other ideas of fun things to deep dive into, learn about, and share the findings—so if you can think of anything, throw up a comment.

As for today, it’s Friday afternoon here and I’m about to go enjoy my favorite part of the week:

$3 gin & tonics with fresh fruit?

Uhh, yes, please.

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JJ Pryor