Fouteen days and counting.......

As I make final preparations to be gone for a while and take my 62 years on the road, I am making clear to me why I choose to take this route (pun intended). It was initially a rather spontaneous decision, to pack up and hack it on my own in strange towns and see what lies out there. I just decided to go. I may be escaping or I may be seeking or I may be doing both.

When I get back to here, to where I began, I will have been divorced for one full year. I still think about it, the divorce and him, more than I want to, I guess because after all, I was married longer than I was not and the divorce was a really big thing for me to do, taking all the courage I could muster to leave and all the strength I had, to deal with the emotions that flowed afterwards. I still get ambushed sometimes, with the bad feelings and regrets for one thing or another. But now the bad feelings are short lived and the regrets are few. I'm doing OK. Life is pretty good. But I want to be able to look back at my married life and be comfortable with it, to see my ex as just someone I once lived with but now I don't. I want that little knot in my stomach to go away for good. That's all.... Its a long road ahead....about 8000 miles, a lot of time to sort things out.

Only one person has really asked me why I want to take such a long trip by myself. But I have discussed it with me just the same, and here are my thoughts, my reasons to travel alone:

To have an adventure and to have fun. I want simply........to have more fun, in spite of all the economic and practical reasons to be more prudent, I want to have more fun!

To challenge myself, to do more than just survive on my own, to live with excitement and purpose. Like the recruitment slogan says, "to be all that I can be."

To allow time to think without the security of familiar things, schedules, responsibilities, chores. (New places + new faces = new ideas?)

To be inspired and, hopefully, to inspire others. To be loud about never being too old or it being too late. There is always more than one way to reach a destination, be that a place on a map or a place in our head.

To have time to travel, paint, write, read, visit with family and friends, experience and appreciate, relax, be peaceful. (I already see a time crunch, here.)

Mostly this. I got divorced. It was a huge decision for both of us. After 39 years of being us, we gave up a lot more than just each other. I would hate to have given up so much without getting something more in return, something better. It is not a question of whether the divorce was the right thing or not, but it was done with the intent to make life better. To be happier. And so that's what has to happen. I'll be taking which ever road will get me there.

I started this whole blog thing with the statement, that my story starts at the end, meaning the end of my marriage. The beginning, I said, comes later. I am now, I think, somewhere in the middle of the beginning.

Mainly I started writing this blog because of the trip, I didn't expect to write so much while still in town and I thought that I might run out of things to say. But, surprise, I've found lots to say. I hope I haven't been boring you, but then again, if you are reading this far, I guess that's a good sign.