Do I Really Want to Click "Publish"?

I intend to use this site to document a record of my experiences during my upcoming adventures. In making the decision, I asked myself what motivates me to do this. Honestly, I am not very motivated, I am forcing myself to do this. I will attempt to explain this to myself and anyone reading, but first I need to say something…

I am eternally grateful for the experiences I am about to have. I understand what a privilege it is to be able to travel, to see parts of the world outside of our own, to be able to take time away from both work and life. One could go on at length about this tremendous privilege because it is just that, a tremendous privilege. Those that know me well, know that this isn’t normal for me. (The exotic travel or the public expression of thoughts and feelings!) Personal travel only became a regular occurrence for me in recent years. My “normal” was to go years without a vacation, to see them as frivolous expenses that I could not afford, to use “vacation time” to recover from an accident or to take care of some other area of life. Now, as that very same person with those experiences still part of me, I get to go off on another amazing adventure in a string of various adventures I have been privileged to experience over the past few years. I want and need to maintain perspective.



Okay, are we good? I hope so. If you are still reading this, thank you. Let’s be honest, if you have read this far, you could tell me this is all for me and I would not argue it. However, if anyone gets anything out of it, I’ll be even more grateful and maybe even feel a little joy. 



So I have decided to force myself to write, to better remember, to remain grateful, and to maintain perspective while gaining new ones. I have always found that when I write something down, I can recall it with much more ease. Yes, the use of pen and paper does help even more, but I'm just not that person, at least not right now. Even the act of writing this initial post is a vast departure for me. It is time to exercise more of the right side of the brain again and maybe stop living so dominantly in the left side. Coincidentally, the left side is where I had my brain hemorrhage. Maybe it was trying to tell me something. Well, it told me many things but maybe it also wanted me to even things out.



I will post pictures too. Posting here will allow friends and family with little to no engagement with social media to be able to check-in if they so choose. Maybe I will make my Instagram account public and just accept the problems that come with it. Instagram could feed to this site if I take the time to figure that out. I could have Googled it in the time I wrote these two sentences. Currently, my Instagram feeds my Facebook account and I think that might be the extent to which I post to social media while I am away, but we will let that play out on its own without any self-imposed sanctions.

One last thing for now... Why "Perfect Freeway"? It is from the opening lyric of David Byrne & Brian Eno's song "Everything That Happens"

    "I ride on a perfect freeway
    Many people on that road"

It later continues

    "Everything that happens will happen today
    And nothing has changed, but nothing's the same
    And every tomorrow could be yesterday
    Everything that happens could happen today"

I am a fan of music, a fan of lyrics I find subjectively appealing, and a (big) fan of David Byrne. I have thoroughly enjoyed the album "Everything That Happens Will Happen Today" from the moment of its release through to today. Those lyrics hit me in a certain way. My interpretation isn't important, but maybe if you listen to the song they will hit you in your certain way too. If you're so inclined, consume the entire album from start to finish as you appear to have done with this post.