Twas the Night Before Vacation

Out of office is set. Flights are confirmed. Packing list is scrawled on a single pink post-it. Pre-travel tasks to be done are written on another, equally pink one.

All that’s left to do is fill the carry-on with two days of clothes and toiletries, and force myself to wake up to the alarm (which is set for the ungodly hour typical of cheap flights).

I feel the same way as when I’m about to give a speech, or open my annual mortgage escrow statement. (Don’t judge.)

That sense of change. Of opportunity for wonderful things and terrible things. And that delicious experience of not knowing where I’m going, and then somewhere in the grayness of time and repetition, knowing. Not to mention adventure and new brands of tedium and connecting with old faces and places, juxtaposed with constant reminders that you truly can never go home again.

In other words, feeling completely and totally alive.

Here’s to the future.