Packing my boxes this week has been awful, and the long faces of my best friends are too depressing for words.

I hate to leave New York and am sort of filled with panic that this whole chapter is over, and I wonder if I'll ever have a chance to live here again. Even if I did, it wouldn't be the same place - New York changes so quickly, with new bars and restaurants opening and the character of whole neighborhoods shifting in a matter of months.

Within a year or so, many of my friends here will move home to their own countries and it will be years before I'll see them again. It's so hard trying to enjoy the farewell dinners and parties - I just feel so sad to be leaving all these people behind.

And I have been very happy here, and have felt so free and so capable in New York, that it's horrible to have to go and I know I'll miss the city all my life.

The fact that I'm off on a four-month holiday is little comfort, really, as I'm going by myself where nobody will know me and the whole projected adventure seems completely blank when I try to fix my mind on it.

As soon as I'm on the plane, though, I know my mind will start to shift and I'll feel like I'm flying straight into my unfettered, unattached, dislocated self. It's a feeling that always thrills me - it starts to creep upon me at the airport and builds as the plane nears its destination. The best is when I wake up the next morning, in a strange room in a strange place, and I slowly work out where I am and I realise I'm all alone with no idea what to expect. Then the world seems so full of possibility and surprise - I love that moment better than almost anything.