Quiet really is the new loud. Twosocks and I are spending three days in Sekotong, a coastal area in the western part of Lombok, where we’ve been spending hours after hours just literally staring at the infinite changing shades of blue in the brilliant sky and magnificent sea, listening to the sighs and whispers of the waves, feeling the salt in the air tease out the waves in our hair, and inhaling the fresh air we are sharing with only a handful of people.

Our travels are usually filled with high powered activities starting from the break of dawn, but this time around, we really needed some quietness. Work was exceptionally busy for the two of us, Twosocks just finished his half marathon the week before, and I was still recovering from a plethora of illnesses that hit me a few months before. We needed some space to clear our heads, fill our lungs with fresh air, stretch, and exhale.So we went to Sekotong, beautiful quiet secluded Sekotong, where we floated in the sea, snorkelled with the rainbow-hued fishes and the purple-blue corals, and fell asleep on the blindingly white sand while the clear turquoise water tickled our feet.

As it turns out, all the peace and quiet sparked long conversations on the delicate balancing act required to live a happy, healthy life. We both love our jobs and will never quit the field if we have the choice to, but I also have another passion that I pursued in time stolen under the moonlight and over the weekend. I admitted to Twosocks that the moonlight passion pursuit does not make me happy. I feel like it pushes my already nearly OCD self into overdrive and detach myself from other people. Twosocks admitted that he wanted to revisit his old hobby of writing fiction and see whether he still knows how to do it. The bottom line is, we both feel that the left part of our brain has taken over and that it is time to give the right part of our brain some time in charge. We want to try new things just for the sake of trying something new, regardless of what the outcome is.

“Come to think of it,” Twosocks said while sipping his millionth fresh young coconut, “The Dusty Sneakers is where we get to do those things.” And he was right! We love the opportunity to experience new things, challenge our previous assumptions, and find new things about ourselves that comes with travelling. We created the blog to capture those feelings and events, mostly for our future selves when our little grey cells are no longer as sharp as how they are today. We already have the medium, for four years and counting,now we only have to think about several other steps to tilt our lives more to right brain side.

We came up, as geeks often do, with a list of three things of how The Dusty Sneakers can help us with these pursuits. We call it, as geeks would do, The Sekotong Charter:
• We will write more often on the blog
I must admit, I am the one who needs to catch up on this front. Twosocks often mocks how often I would post something after a long hiatus and say “I’m back” to only disappear for a few months after. I came up with a solution to my mental block a few weeks ago and now I have to live by my words!
• We will try to get to know more travellers
We would like to get to know more travellers, because we would like to hear more stories of how different people experience different places. The same place can result in so many different stories and angles and we would like to hear as many as possible! The easiest way to start this, we think, is by signing up to Twitter and let the wonder of social media lead us to as many people who are generous with their travel stories and experience.
• We will explore Jakarta with more playfulness
The best thing about travelling is our willingness to be open minded in experiencing and embracing a new place. We would like wear the traveller-tinted glasses more often in the way we’re engaging with Jakarta, our smutty, gregarious, and in-your-face hometown in the hopes of being able to love it more. We’ve come up with a way to do this that will also allow Twosocks to exercise his fiction writing, but let us share more about this in another time – perhaps in the new year. I will share what we’re calling this experiment though –Ah Jakarta.

Charters come and go, some became milestones in history while others faded into non-significance. Here in Sekotong, we decided to take the first step towards implementation by setting up our Twitter account. @dustysneakers is now out there to get to know more travellers and hear more about your travel stories. Give us a buzz!

Let’s see what will become of The Sekotong Charter in time. We’ll share more about how it pans out – but later. Right now is the time to stare some more at the sea and sky, until the splashing waves of calling us to the waters in the quiet, kind, generous Sekotong become too loud to ignore.

Sekotong, 4 November 2013
Gypsytoes