A New Path

 I sorted out my mess, filled bags and bags full of clothing, tapes, movies, papers, love letters (not really), you name it in an attempt to get the physical clutter out of the way that was feeding into my mental clutter. It worked. I feel free and and relaxed and a bit more confident. I did a few rough calculations and the savings I planned for seems quite within reach, but its going to take a bit of discipline and lots of beans and less meat and almost no take out burgers or restaurants of any sort or nights out.

I hung up a world map and an Africa map right next to it on my mirror with a thin strip for looking in just to make sure I don’t resemble Alfalfa on any particular day. Though I had little doubt that I’d be able to bring this thing together, this weekend put the “how” into perspective. All the methods that I’m using to save feel like a wonderful game with the reward already predetermined. It does not feel like sacrifice at all. I get a kick out of inventing another set of meals out of what I have at hand instead of making a shopping trip. My bike trips into work, as I’ve already mentioned, are a blast. Even at work I watch the hours pass and think of how a couple of hours is going to fund another day in Argentina. When I go into overtime, I can taste the bittersweet mate pouring into my gullet.

 

Though money will be an issue up until the day I achieve true financial independence (read:pipedream), things are definitely looking up in the last week. I found, as of today, 2.5 k that I didn’t know existed. That should be enough to fund my trip and I should have plenty left over to reintegrate myself back into the humdrum workaday life that we all must live, to an extent.

As I plan and obsess over it, I’m seeing that this trip is fully manageable and it grows less and less of a risky venture the more I plan. Its coming together as a theme now: If I want it, there are ways to make it happen. I have told only one friend about the full extent of my plans. My parents have the idea that I’m doing the usual two week jaunt. But I feel a need to get enough of the details of this straight and as solid as they can be before dragging my parents into what they will almost certainly see as the begining of my descent into lunacy.

The curative for my major anxieties, the relatively minor ones will always be there, is simply that I've done this before in a different form. Several years ago I moved here, to Flagstaff, from across the country. ... [Continue reading this entry]

I dusted off the mountain bike on Friday and took advantage of the waning winter weather to ride to my job. The snows are winding down after just winding up in March here in Northern ... [Continue reading this entry]

"At night, after the exhausting games of canasta, we would look over the immense sea, full of white-flecked and green reflections, the two of us leaning side by side on the railing, each of us ... [Continue reading this entry]

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 ... [Continue reading this entry]

I got out the map and routed my journey. The first place I ever wanted to travel was not Nepal, or Morocco or Peru, it was Salisbury. Not the Salisbury in England, but a small ... [Continue reading this entry]

What started as plans for just another sensible, but ridiculously harried, two week vacation to a foreign land, grew. I looked at a map of Argentina spanning the depths of the Southern Hemisphere from the ... [Continue reading this entry]