I’m setting this post to stay at the top of the front page for a bit.  For new posts, just scroll down a little.

So, big changes in my life of late.  New to the scene?  Okay, it’s basically this: think “Eat, Pray, Love.”  Now subtract the book advance to pay for it all, and you have the general idea.

Not that I’m opposed to book advances.  Seriously, if one of you brilliant, cultured, and incredibly darn-good-looking (as I know all of you are) people in the publishing industry would just love to shower me with advance money to write about this whole crazy thing, far be it from me to argue.

Today I’m sitting in the quiet study room in a library near The Parentage’s house, where I’m currently crashing for a short time before the next stage of my journey (whatever it turns out to be) begins.  Spread before me is a map of the world.  A couple of notebooks lie nearby, messy notes and various attempts at organization (none of which seems to be particularly successful) in them.  On the laptop, a half dozen browser windows are open, and within each of them a series of tabs.

I stare at the map, and feel totally, completely overwhelmed.

Yes, I know, I am risking the wrath of Faux News by wishing everyone a Happy Holidays rather than the mouthful “IWishYouAMerryChristmasAndAHappyNewYear.”  On the other hand, if I wish everyone a Merry Christmas, does that mean that Faux News has won?  Oy, politics is so confusing…

Happy Thanksgiving, y’all! I’m currently with relatives in South Carolina where, as i understand it, the use of y’all is a legal requirement. At least by Hollywood stereotype standards.

Just taking a moment from the travels to say hello and wish all of you and your families a Happy Thanksgiving. May all of your tryptophan hangovers be good ones!

So, I’ve finally figured out how to find the time to write a post while traveling!

Turns out, it’s simple: come down with a cold and end up socked away in a hotel in Maryland for a few days.  Simple, no?

[Okay, I'm going to try and start posting some of the stuff I've been writing these past few weeks.  For the moment, though, they'll just be text posts, since I don't have time to edit pictures; hopefully I'll be going back and illustrating the posts with pictures down the line...]

Tonight is my first night since leaving Portland and, although I’ve been doing a lot since Lava Beds, I’ve written very little.  I’m starting to wonder if that might not end up being a theme of the trip: I’ll end up doing so much that I won’t end up writing or posting all that much.  How do travel writers actually do it?

I think there’s two answers to that question, actually: 1) they stay up late and get it done and 2) they have hotel rooms, and so don’t have to spend a couple hours setting up camp and making dinner.  This may explain why travel articles are about cruises and hotels and more expensive stuff than living on the road out of a tent: there’s just more time when home for the night is already built and dinner is cooked by someone else.

I’m just ‘sayin.

So, here’s the first major revelation I’ve learned on my trip so far:

It’s damned hard to be a travel blogger when most of the places you’re traveling to have no internet, or cell, or even electrical service.

That, and the fact that the “Run, Lola, Run” soundtrack can make every curve in the highway seem like you’re on an exciting movie-style car chase.

“Don’t panic. Take a deep breath. KEEP CALM.”

Keeping calm was the second thought that went through my head.  It followed on the heels of sheer panic, which is what happens when you’re deep underground in a lava tube, with only a flashlight in otherwise pitch blackness, and you realized that the path you’re trying to get out on is not the path you came in on.

I’d read about it before, sure, but nothing matches the feeling of being in that moment and trying to quash the natural instinct to turn 180 and backtrack as fast as possible without thinking.

So, here it is, the day of departure.

I feel like I should be typing something deep and profound.  Like all those speeches they used to give before people began on long expeditions.

Truth is, though, I’m just flat-out exhausted.

This will likely be my last hand-written entry in this journal.  It will probably surprise no one when I say that I’ve come to the Secret Spot to write it, a mere two days before I’m scheduled to move out of my house.

This may have been a mistake, and not just because I really should be at home packing.  No, the last few days have been difficult; as I plan to depart, I’m reminded of that which I’m leaving behind.  This wonderful canyon, for example, which is absolutely perfect today.  There are other places, too: other hikes, favorite restaurants, my local library.  My home which, though sometimes hot in the summer and cold in the winter, has had the most distinct “home” feeling of any place I’ve lived since leaving for college 20 years ago.

Want to feel old?  Go sit in a coffee shop in a small college town, such as the one I’m sitting in here in San Luis Obispo.  It’s the perfect place to watch the youngins, so hard at work yet so full of dreams, and mull over the different paths one’s life might have taken.

I’m good at that.  Forever looking back, pondering the choices I made, wondering less about the mistakes and more about the ones I made out of pure stubbornness.

[Surely I can’t be the only one who does that.  Can I?]