Aaaaaannnnd we’re back.
My three loyal readers may recall that I had a blog when I was in India a few years ago, but that it fell into disuse when I got home. Now I find once again that a few months abroad has provided the incentive to write publicly, so my highs and lows will be here for you to examine at your leisure. Posting will be constrained primarily by internet connectivity and my patience for the rather word-hostile keyboard on the Asus netbook I bought for the trip.
The title of this blog comes from a book by Gore Vidal which I have not read, but it is a phrase I have always admired. Quite a long time ago I had a blog of that name at this domain, but through carelessness I let the domain expire and it was acquired by someone else. However the charming ‘other’ Stephen Flanagan was kind enough to give the domain back to me; if you are reading, thank you once again for your generosity.
Tomorrow afternoon I fly to Amsterdam with Katie, and from there on Wednesday morning we take the long flight to Lima in Peru. And after that it’s Machu Picchu, the Galapagos, Easter Island, the Antarctic, several weeks of unplanned wanderings, and then home. In three months I will hit quite a few of the items on the things-I’ve-always-wanted-to-do list, and I think I have found a decent balance between time and depth.
It’s strange now to sit and write this on the night before departure. For as along as I can remember I’ve wanted to travel, to see places I had never known were worth seeing, to learn the hidden things that all the reading in the world can’t teach you. Somehow, though, the stream of years has taken me in a different direction, through engineering, journalism, Google, and always there was something more compelling than time off, something delaying the wandering I have yearned for. Until now. And yet at this moment, I can’t even tell you what it is that I am hoping to get from any of this, what I am trying to achieve. It just seems _right_ in a very fundamental way, like when you try and solve a puzzle for a while and then suddenly all the steps to the solution become clear.
Everyone else is heading back to work tomorrow, Christmas over for another year even though the trees and the lights are resisting the inevitable for  few more days. It still doesn’t seem quite real to me that I won’t be going back too, that I won’t be at my desk in Gordon House as usual tomorrow, swapping stories of Christmas and sizing up another year and another quarter. I’m in a strange middle ground between nervous and excited and uncomfortable, where all three seem to be balancing each other out and leaving only a slightly worried sense of anticipation.
Anyway, here’s to it. There’s only one way to know how all of this is going to go down.
