This next pre-trip blog entry is Why as in Why am I doing this?

The previous entries on Who, What, When and Where are about objective things and tangible ideas and seem to be easier to write as they were more fact-based. The Why and How portions of this blog are much more subjective and esoteric and more difficult to write. However, these thoughts get closer to the heart or Purpose of this trip and thus they make up for the relative difficulty in putting these two entries together. Having Purposes for this trip is important to me, they will give the trip more meaning and keep me focused when things get tough. The Purposes will be a topic for a future blog entry.

“I Have Become Comfortably Numb” is one reason why I’m hitting the road. I went into this reference in more detail in my first pre-trip blog entry. I am (was) very comfortable in my life and career and I now want to shake things up a bit (okay – a lot) and challenge myself to get way outside of my comfort zone and do something different.

Due to the significant planning and thought I’ve put into this trip, I am scared not to take it now. That may seem kinda stupid but it is part of what drives me. I had a thought a few months ago about what I would feel if I (for any reason) did not take this trip. This thought made my blood go cold and I knew not going would be the wrong decision. I have a lot of confidence and trust in my gut feelings and I use my “gut” to help me know if a decision is right or wrong. It’s only through experience that I’ve learned to trust my feelings. I’ve made too many wrong decisions in my life and I know how those decisions have made me feel. I think I have a heightened sense of right and wrong, these two words of course being subjective and defined by upbringing, learned morals and, unfortunately, the media. Anyway, I seem to know when I make a good, or right, decision and vice versa.

Taking this trip, going around the world and all that this entails is the right decision and that is Why I am doing this. When I wrote this I smiled and felt good, giving me some reassurance over the doubts that occasionally creep into my mind.

Why does someone in his early 40’s with a great career at an excellent company, good friends and a house on a golf course in beautiful Southeast Indiana throw it all away for a vague plan to travel? There are so many downsides to doing this! I’ll deal with (and write about) the downsides in the How entry but I am focused on the many, many upsides and positives this trip will bring to my life.

Let’s think about the upsides or positives.

Sometimes I think too logically and try to break down complex thoughts and reasoning into smaller bits to help me explain and help readers understand what I am trying to get across. This definitely helps when writing a business memo and may help me organize my thoughts on this blog. I really don’t want this blog to sound like a memo or position paper I would write at work, I want it to be a free-flowing expression of my thoughts, ideas and observations. It will be my challenge to combine the science of memo writing with the art of interesting blog writing and I imagine that my style will ultimately be some combination of the two. Once again, I digress, now back to the logical sequencing of the positives or upsides: I want to break these down into three parts:

1. Opportunity
2. Means
3. Ability

The opportunity to travel and see parts of the world I’ve only read about is so exciting. I read a quote once that goes something like “Life is a book and those who don’t travel live only a few chapters”. I don’t think I got it exactly right and I don’t want to sound egotistical in that I will lead a better life than those who don’t travel because that’s not true and I don’t feel that way. Many of my friends and co-workers have said they would like to do what I am planning and I really appreciate their thoughts and kudos but I also admire their lives, being settled in a good, comfortable life and community with family and kids – that is a life to admire. For many different reasons the path of my life has not included a wife and children or much continuity in setting down roots in any one place. This gives me the opportunity to so something like this, to explore other parts of the world and see what I am missing in this book of life. I sometimes think that planning and taking this trip is in God’s plan for my life and that I am meant to do what I am going to do.

I have the means to undertake a traveling plan of this magnitude. I have been very fortunate in my career to make decent money and to save a bit of it over the years. A couple of good investments have also helped and have, for the most part, made up for some of the poorer investment decisions I’ve made. The stock market is a great gamble and I appreciate gambling in all its forms but being a disciplined investor in both bear and bull markets over the last 10 years has paid off. I think it was Benjamin Franklin who extolled the benefits of compound interest and he is right in that philosophy. Also, don’t overlook the benefits of dollar-cost-averaging in investing for the long term. A disciplined approach of buying mutual funds for a set amount of money once or twice a month regardless of share price is a great mechanism for saving money and growing your net worth. I think I sound like Suze Orman but it is good advice. What this really means is that I have the means to quit my job, travel around the world in virtually any style I chose (although I will be a budget traveler) and be able to come back to the real world (if I so chose) and take my time to decide where, and for whom, I want to work in the future.

The ability to travel… What does that mean? To me it means physical and mental ability. I’m in decent shape for a guy my age. I won’t be climbing Mount Everest or walking across the Gobi Desert but I may climb Mt. Kilimanjaro and walk the Galilee. I will need to understand and respect my physical limitations and will learn as I go what I can’t (or shouldn’t) do and what I can do. Injury and/or illness are a big deal and a real risk and I respect these risks. I am particularly concerned about my back and my history of back pain – more on that later. The mental aspects of long-term travel are real and need to be thought out and dealt with as much as possible prior to heading out. There are so many things about long-term travel that can’t be anticipated and that will hit me by surprise, both good and bad, that I need to be mentally prepared to deal with. By definition, the unanticipated can’t be anticipated with a series of thought out responses. Mental preparation comes from research and good, old fashioned reading. There are so many great resources in the bookstores and on the internet that information overload becomes a concern but through these resources can come a comfort and partial understanding about what I may face on the road. The best resource for me has been http://www.bootsnall.com (this host site) with its Member Forum and other blogs. The people who contribute to this site, who run the site and the writers of the blogs have been a great inspiration to me and have helped prepare me mentally for this trip. I feel strongly that I am physically and mentally prepared for this journey and I will report back to this blog and my dear readers over time to see if this is true.

To bring this WHY blog entry to a close, I wonder if I have sufficiently explained to you the reasons why I am doing what I am doing? It is very clear in my mind that what I am doing is the right thing to do for me but I don’t always have it in my mind in an organized way to properly explain it to people I know and love and to those who stumble onto this site who have no idea who I am.

I am going on this trip, this adventure for the reasons explained above and for this simple reason: I WANT TO!
I’m excited and I can’t wait to go. Writing this journal, this blog only feeds the fire of anticipation and makes me think of all the wonderful and fun adventures of the future.

Thank you for reading this. I hope to make this blog both interesting and entertaining. Please post a comment and let me know your thoughts, observations or counsel. Hearing from readers and knowing I have an audience is a great motivator and will be a great morale booster during down times on the road. Don’t forget to bookmark this site and tell a friend! Please feel free to e-mail me at “JeffMichie at Yahoo Dot Com”