This is how it starts

“For an occurrence to become an adventure, it is necessary and sufficient for one to recount it.”  ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

About six months ago, I made my New Year's Resolution: to use all of my vacation days.  Not a bad resolution as far as these things go, but not exactly earth shattering.  What was disturbing, however, was that I had become a person who did not use their vacation days.  Moreover, I was someone who had more unused vacation days than unused sick days.

Come New Years Day, I found myself on the couch, not with a champagne hangover, but rather, some nasty bug I had picked up over the holidays, already feeling defeated about the impending vacation day to sick day deficit.  This was not how I wanted to start the year!

After a round of antibiotics (maybe the third in my lifetime) and nearly a week's worth of sick days, I was back on my feet, but lacking a spring in my step.  To tell the truth, that spring had been missing for a while.  And I wasn't the only one who had noticed its absence.

Enter Mom.  In one of our many phone conversations, she suggested that I wasn't scoring all that high on the happiness scale these days, and perhaps I should take some time off - retire for a little while, were her exact words - to do the things I always said I wanted to do, but never had the time (read: energy).  "Why wait until you are 60?" she asked me.  I did not have a good answer.  Why indeed.

Six months later, with the support of my amazing family and friends, I am happily unemployed for the first time in my adult life, packing up my house and preparing to board a flight to London to spend the summer studying photography, traveling, and generally doing whatever I feel like doing.  I have given myself the gift of six months to wander about.  I only have a "plan" for the first three - which, if you know me, is highly unusual.

There will be good days, there will be bad days, there will be days when I am homesick and days when I am on top of the world.  And that's what this blog is for: to document my journey and to share with my friends and family; to recount it, so as to ensure that rather than simply an occurrence, this is truly an adventure, and hopefully just the start of one at that.