Today.
Today I am leaving for 3 months. To go to the other side of the world. For ‘Fun.’
I need to repack.
I need to do laundry and water the plants. The trash needs to be put out… and I still need to pack!
The dogs need to be brushed out, and I have been meaning to get fix the door of the closet…
I need to stop avoiding and focus.
The car is leaving at 11 if I am ready or not. The plane will leave in 2 days if I have the website up and running or not. This is happening no matter how many pairs of shoes I bring.
I cannot believe this is really happening, shoes or otherwise.
I have a history of ‘intensely sampling’ things. I played 5 musical instruments at one point in my life. Not all at the same time, mind you, but I would not be so common to only have experience playing one. Never excelled at any of them and now I dabble in piano and claim to look longingly at the other instruments from time to time.
I phase in and out of being a writer going from book level hair pulling to uninspired grocery list in my tomes. I take 10,000 photos in 2 months and then my cameras collect dust for the next 6. I took flying lessons because it interested me. Still working on that one, but I was all in until I was not. I even went through a phase (several honestly) where I obsessed with exercise. Swam 2 miles, biked 30 and walked 5. 6 days a week.
I suppose the point is I tend to hyperfocus and do things to an extreme level before moving on to the next daisy in the field.
Just putting that out there because you might not have noticed that oddity given the limited scope of this trip.
Having said that, I always had an interest in other places and how other people live. I have not acted on that interest much before this trip, partly because of family needs and partly because I was waiting for someone to take me, or at least go with me.
Many of my intense sampling recently has been near home, but circumstances recently opened my mind to getting the heck out of dodge.
Recently, I have struggled with realities of slowing down physically. I know being over 50 does not dictate slow, but I was not kind to my body in the past. I cite the obsessive exercise phases as an example.
But the fact is, I did slow down while we were building our house last year. I was unable to do a lot of the work I wanted to do because physically I was presented with a very well thought out thesis about me not being 20 anymore.
I always knew I would have joint replacements. My mother had 2 hips and 2 knees, so unless medical science figured it out, at some point… always in the distant future until it was not… I was going bionic.
I was hoping the bionic would be after age 60, but here we are. The joints follow the estrogen , creating super humans out of fragility. Wonder Women in menopause. I wonder if the FAA will let me fly the invisible plane.
Slowing down physically is harder on the mind than the body in my opinion. Couple the reality of age and fragility, with the freedom of an empty house and retirement is a cruel punishment. From what deity or why it is bestowed I am not clear, but the freedom of caretaking and the confinement of body forces uncomfortable and usually reflective questions.
But none of this is new. People everywhere, in every time have faced, conquered and thrived beyond ‘middle age.’
It is ‘middle’ age, after all. Not ‘just slipped out of the womb,’ or ‘drop the coffin in the hole.’ There is hope, promise, assumption of a second act. I can live through an intermission.
Yet some don’t. I have lost several in recent years who were not my elders, but my contemporaries and that hits you. I believe I struggled through a simple hip replacement, but others are facing deadly diseases or permanent disability. What do they all say? Live life to the fullest because tomorrow is not a promise.
So I do crazy stuff. I hyper focused on getting out and seeing the world. I took a 3 week vacation and turned it into 3 months on the logic that I would be over there, so why not.
Never thought I would actually follow through until I did.
Never thought it was a crazy idea, because it is not. I have sat in my chair, or by a bedside, or supporting others projects and successes for a lot longer than 3 months.
ANd I do have that history of hyper focus, so I might as well just move through this one too. It was never a crazy plan.
Okay, it might have been a crazy plan.
Yeah, might have gone slightly off the deep end with this one, but here we are.
Big, grand, unexpected ideas are pushed into the reality realm.
And that is happening today.
Crap. What have I done?
