Beginnings

I keep telling people, I need to start a blog for my travels if only to assure people I am both alive and not in jail.  It’s a rather odd statement and yet kinda true.  I’m preparing for this journey, a once in a lifetime some tell me (I don’t necessarily agree but I’ll come back to that thought), and I want some way to communicate with those I’m leaving behind.  Its part for posterity's sake and part in hopes of inspiring some to join me in my travels and share my adventures.  Now I should probably talk about what in the world I’m doing.  What journey?

About a year ago, I reached a point in my life where I just wasn't happy with my life.  I didn't recognize myself.  I was angry, irritable, and finding it hard to find and appreciate the simple pleasures of life.  A change needed to be made.  I thought about what in life truly makes me happy and what I came up with was traveling and dance.  With dance, I've had several opportunities come up and I've grabbed them with a vengeance and have no regrets.  Traveling was another matter.  There are always excuses not to travel: no money, no time, how to get there, how to pay the bills while I’m gone and also when I get back.  The list goes on.  Now the ideal way to approach this would be to get a job that allows me to travel.  I looked into this briefly but in my heart what I truly wanted was to wander the globe with a single backpack and an open mind.  

And so I made the decision.  Come the end of August the following year, I would follow that dream.  Through many different plan changes, it has arrived at Thailand as my starting point.  First a brief stop at my parents and a wedding, a stint in the desert, San Francisco to come down from that stint, and Thailand.  I’m going to be teaching English, farming, building housing, and whatever else life throws at me.  As someone said to me, I’ll go where the wind blows me.  It may blow me eventually back to the US, but I have no intention of forcing it back in that direction.  

I now stand on the precipice of starting this journey and I’m both terrified and exhilarated.  Excited to see what life will show me and the world will offer me.  Terrified I’ll fail.  Nervous of the unknown but ready to embrace it all.  Trusting in the knowledge that no matter what happens from this point on, I will have succeeded in following this dream.  I am ‘A Monkey with a Backpack.”