Nerves, nerves, nerves

---

Up until fairly recently, I thought I was pretty much the only one who suffered from what we in plain Swedish call "resfeber" or, literally translated, "travel fever". When you're just sitting at home, flipping through books and magazines, travelling sounds like the most wonderful thing in the world. So you book your trip, you start planning, looking forward to it. Then it hits you. You're really going. It could be wonderful, but oh dear God are there a billion things that could go wrong... And the worrying, nervousness and anxiety begins.

Just recently I read an opinion piece in a Swedish travel magazine about this very phenomenon, and it made me realise this does, in fact, happen to other people - even to seasoned travellers. The piece suggested the reasons for feeling like this could be individual, but that they have something in common at the core - and that is change. We humans are creatures of habit, and setting out on a journey is a break of our normal routine. We place ourselves in an unfamiliar situation, in a place and with people we do not know. In a sense, travelling is risk-taking. It could also be fear of flying, which in a way forces you to come to peace with the thought that you may not come back alive every time you travel.

I guess for me it's mainly flying that's the issue, because I'd have no other reason to feel as nervous as I do now when I'm leaving for England on Friday. Fear of flying, coupled with organising anxiety - shall I manage to bring everything I need with me? What about trains to take me from Manchester to Sheffield? Will they be delayed? How much cash will I need on me to cover the taxi from the station to the house? And what shall await me at the house? Since hearing from a housemate, I'm a bit nervous about that as well, as there seems to be some issues with the landlord, and knowing the state the house was in when we last saw it... I just hope that it is clean at least. And that the appliances work. Anything else we can probably deal with later. It's just a shame the previous tenants were so filthy - it is quite a nice house, if you overlook the fact that they (old tenants) made it into a mound of garbage.

Oh well, I guess I'll find out. For now, I'll go and continue to worry and fret over backing and everything else.

---