Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica.

Right... rant warning.

I've always had a strange desire to test myself by being washed up on a desert island, but I fear that my skills at survival would be no match for a lack of will.

I'm having one of those off-days. It started yesterday with yet another bought of the shits. I think it's the river water feeding directly to our taps. The simple system goes wrong at least once a week which offers me a diversion from the garden and usually involves flushing through the 300m plastic pipe and sealing it again with bits of recycled tyre inner-tube. Been feeling weak for a couple of days and unable to motivate myself to do much more than check the seedling corn, beans, tomatoes, peppers and squashes we've planted or to go for a wander in the rainforest again to get away from the screaming kids (another one has appeared from nowhere).

I did have a nice, fulfilling feeling that I was Ray Mears during my morning walk. As I walked along a trail I recognised several fruit trees, taro roots (which are a great form of jungle carbs but need to be cooked or they will poison you), and a couple of useful trees for making bows or shelters. But I couldn't stretch out the work-dodging for ever, and I needed to rush back to the toilet again anyway! I've completely lost my appetite and fear I insulted Selina by not eating her lunch burritos. After that I had to lay down and felt so weak I couldn't bring myself to leave my bed. And it was raining heavily. And the dogs had had diarrhoea all over the porch. And the cat had puked on the sofa. And I ran out fags the day before yesterday. Considered a 3 hour trek through the mountainous snake-infested rainforest with a machete to the shop but thought that might be admitting addiction. I remained hidden under my mosquito net while Selina cleaned up the various soils.

Not sure whether my malaise is a result of weakness or the other way round. Feeling like I'm in my own headspace a little too much at the moment. Don't feel like communicating, but at the same time feeling lonely and missing grimey Bristol nights out with friends or simple nights of guitar and giggles with my sister and Emily T. Or a DVD round Martha and Jim's where she always falls asleep on me before the end of the film. Decided to get up and play cards with the Canadians and discovered it was Friday. You lose track in the rainforest as days blur into one another. Needed a change of scene. After an excited bag-packing session I realised I had a spare hour before the bus arrived at the foot of the mountain so attempted to teach them the wonders of Shithead.

Arrived at the bus stop dripping wet with tropical rains. On the bus I had a chat with an indigenous farmer I met last week at the bus stop. He was off on his regular friday mission to sell a bunch of plantains and some unidentified yellow balls to shops in town to earn some cash. I took heart that my Spanish is at least good enough to have a broken conversation about growing food and the weather. A quick trip to the supermercado to buy Frosties (they'd ran out of Crunchy Nut) and REAL milk and I checked in to the cheap hotel I stay at in town. Was glad to be able to charge up my iPod again and listen to The Gits to remind myself of the sounds of dirty city passion. Checked emails and discovered some bad news from home - my thoughts are with you, mate and I'm sorry I'm not there.

Chatted to a couple of drunk locals last night over some Cuba Libres. When I told them my plans to climb mountains and travel they asked "what do I need to do to have what you've got?" I didn't have an answer for them. I realised I was just lucky and felt stupid.

My rather empty feelings, leaving-guilt, and lack of motivation are resulting in an emotional state that I think is some strange combination of a feeling of waste, ungratefulness and an overdose of freedom. It's something I've written about in other places and chatted about with Martha a lot - the strange feeling that many of our generation have: an excess of freedom. Sounds ridiculous, doesn't it. Thousands die for the idea of it every year and we have this weird psychological problem with it. It is the existential problem of our generation as Kundera would say. The ridiculousness of it is the reason we can't face it and can't overcome it. We feel guilty that we don't know what to do with all our freedoms. We can travel anywhere in the world if we save for a bit. We have the education to do anything we want if we put in the corresponding effort. We can, within certain practical limits do whatever we want, anywhere. So what do we do with our freedom? Read about the struggles of others, do drugs and either flit between flawed causes or keep ourselves busy so we don't have to. Perhaps our inheritance from Baudellaire (the first to write about it in a sense) is a similar boredom, disgust, and addiction to decadence, except now we try and hide it from ourselves. Even living the dream by buying land and setting up an organic farm in another country is a kind of rude decadence. The land is only available to us because it is too expensive for the people who have always lived there. The mass result: melancholic lack of will and an urge for distraction. It is both a hidden insult to those who lack the freedom we have and a quicksand of fear of our losing it. We say we'd fight for it but we lack the certainty that we'd be doing the right thing. We want the destruction of the system of which we are the benefactors. If we had the button in front us to do just that would we have the will to push it?

I'm jealous of those who can sing and make heartfelt music or dance their hearts out. There is no question of right and wrong, just beauty and honest feeling and smiling satisfaction. Listened to one of E.T.'s albums on my decadent little iPod while writing this entry. It's amazing how music has the power to bring tears to the eyes when we can walk by dying dogs and people who live under banana-leaf shelters on the beach without a second thought. Never let anyone tell you music's a waste of time ("you should be out earning money or something" say a million Dads). Anything with that power has purpose.

If I had a guitar I'd be playing it. I'm going for a swim in the sea instead. It's still raining.