As the month of April grows closer, my awareness of the magnitude of what I am about to do grows larger. On April 17th I will break nearly all ties with my current life and move on to something totally new and very different. I will be officially homeless for a few months having given up my apartment, sold my car and most of my belongings, and hopped on a plane to San Diego where I will take a bus to the small town of Campo. There to start a 2650 mile hike beginning at the Mexican border and hopefully ending at the Canadian border. Then, within a few days of finishing that hike, I will hop on another plane, leave the US behind, and land in Ecuador with no real plans for ever returning. Even for me, someone that is used to radical changes in my life, this is a pretty big leap. Just thinking about the enormity of it all reminds me of a line spoken by Morgan Freeman in The Shawshank Redemption.

“I find I am so excited I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head. I think it is an excitement only a free man can feel. A free man at the start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain.”

Red/Morgan Freeman

On my right palm, which in palmistry is indicative of the now and the future, my lifeline has a very distinct break. A number of events in my life have made me think I had reached that point in my life. And each time I think it is behind me, something else comes along to make me doubt that earlier thought. Perhaps a fractured lifeline is not indicative of a specific event, but of a general trend in how I live my life, with breaks happening every so often. As with most things, I will only gain clarity in retrospect.

Sometimes the changes in my life are self-inflicted and born of a desire to challenge myself and change my perspective of the world. Sometimes they have no greater motivation than the desire to shake things up and experience something different. At other times the motivation is external as if the world is forcing to me head down a new path. In the end, the motivation is less important than the outcome and the only way to discover that outcome is to make the change and see what happens. And that is what I am doing.

Do not go gentle into that good night

Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.