Over Time One Gets Tired of Planning

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One can only plan so much...

My wife is not one who likes to plan. She is incredibly spontaneous which is a marvel to me. I ,on the other hand, am one who fears spontinaity. I like to know where I'm going, when, and how I plan to get there. At the beginning of this trip planning I was gung ho about reading everything I could about each country of Europe. Then after being informed, I would make some choices about whwre I'd like to travel and what our timelines would be like. I started off reading about Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece...but all of that reading has come to an end. There is only so much reading one can do before one gets exhausted, confused and bored.

At this point I have decided to lay off reading any more until maybe a month to six weeks prior to the actual trip. At that point I will read about a place a few days before we get there and just play it by ear. I will admit that this will most likely cause me stress at first, but hopefully I will overcome this desire for planning and just have fun. Travel like this is about spontinaity, its about meeting people, changing plans, going where you want to go when you want to go. So, with that said, I am officially putting all of the planning to rest.

Work, Life and the Future

WE officially only have 17 weeks and 2 days of work left before we leave Capital One. I would have to say I am neither excited nor sad about the idea of not being here any more. After 6 years of working sometimes very hard and other times not hard at all, I feel sadly ambivalent about the prospect of not coming to work for a while. I would have expected that the idea of not working would have made me want to explode with joy, but instead I just don't seem to care. I do imagine that coming back to work after a year of fun, travel, excitement and craziness will probably be very difficult...but considering how ambivalent I am about leaving I may be excited about returning. Stranger things have happened.

On the life front, all of our friends (literally all of them) have decided that now is the time to have babies. It makes sense. We are all between 28 and 33 and if you plan on having multiple kids then you best get started now. The only challenge for me, and maybe Kel but I don't like to speak for her, is that upon our return we will be the only people without a child. It will be culture shock enough for us (me) to return to the US after having spent a year of soaking in foreign culture...but to make matters worse, the lives of our friends will ahve all changed. No more late nights in a back yard sharing beers and laughing amongst friends. Instead it will be all play groups and birthday parties. OUCH!

Next steps

As I said, 17 weeks then no more work. We have solidified whose taking our house. We are continuing to work on the cars. Other than that, its just a waiting game. I am reading a brief history of Europe, 1300 pages of what happened in the past few millenia. Figured it might be nice to actually understand where Europeans come from. Otherwise, work, play, rest and wait.

Hope everyone is well,
Mike T.

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Comments

[Meredith Van Voorhis]

Baby Culture Shock
Mike and KT - I hope you have great trip! Enjoy your adventure :) As for all the friends having babies - we can relate as we were on the end of our friends joining parent-dom. It will change those backyard get-togethers some but we are starting to see how much fun the next stage can be. Plus you can still have the beers and hang on the deck after the kids are in bed (which is pretty early - so the night is still young)!! So the good times will still be here when you return.