As of Today...

The largest task at hand is taking each individual fear and quelling it. If I face whatever is there with the frame of mind of the survivor I know I can be, there is nothing really to be aprehensive about. I can save the money, easily, not just for the trip, but for a few months worth of safety net. I can find a new job when I get back. In fact, my old one was leading me nowhere, worse than nowhere, towards a miserable existence in which I stopped growing. The six months I plan to put up with that is probably six months longer than I should put up with it, except that now the money I earn is going towards a good cause.

The feeling that I must have everything in order before I leave is a fiction. I should have enough in control that my life isn’t in total chaos upon my return, but so what if everything isn’t spelled out to the letter? No. Its just another dimension of my fear, the very thing I wish to quash through my travels, through my lifestyle.

For now I’ll work on the basics. Getting a backpacking stove so I can hike Patagonia. Brushing up on my Spanish well ahead of time, so I can have decent talks with Argentinians. Reviewing logistics, keeping an eye on ticket prices. And for the long run, getting in the mind set that this is how I want my life to proceed from here on out: my job is a means to gather resources for my traveling and not that my traveling is a way to recuperate so I can exhaust myself in the workforce again. I hope that my job and my writing and my traveling will all be intermingled in mutually supporting ways soon, but for now its just a thought. Written 4/5/06