Change In Plans

This post is about how we are feeling on the eve of our departure for the first long leg of our trip.

We are all feeling a little tense, kids included. We will be fine, but tempers are short, and no one is feeling light or carefree. Maybe this is to be expected, but there seem to be several contributing reasons to the family’s mood:

• We have a lot of organizing and packing to do before our flight takes off tomorrow evening. We will be gone a moderately long time. India has done an amazing job of organizing the trip, but there is still a long punch list, and not much time
• I have been having a lot of “are we crazy?” feelings. I made the mistake of thinking too much about what we are “investing,” in the broad sense of that word, in this trip: the scarce resources of non-working time and limited money, the disruption to our kids’ educations and lives, some level of physical discomfort and risk for us all. I weighed those “costs” against what the expected “benefits” from this travel, and I am still struggling to have it make sense. We have assumed that travel is inherently good/valuable/interesting, and left it at that. This is probably the wisest course, and I can re-evaluate later.
• We are stepping into an unknown phase of our lives. The places will benew, but more importantly, the experience of not having a home to go back to, and not really having an end date in mind. It feels a little like looking into an abyss, although that is overly dramatic. It surprises me to write it, but there are elements of being settled that I really like.

Fortunately, some of the more significant issues that have been creating stress in our lives have gone away in the last 48 hours. Both parties finally signed the agreement which governs my departure from my job, and basically funds this entire adventure. I don’t think there was any problem, it was just not a high priority for anyone. If there had been a problem, it would have been a huge disruption to the plan. Also, we have finally gotten our air travel sorted out (at least the first piece). That took a lot longer than we hoped. We have gotten our passports back, just in time, from getting visas. Lastly, we have all been troubled by minor health issues, which seem to be resolving. None of these were individually earth shattering or critical, but collectively they were weighing us down.

So, we will get through the next day, and try to do it with grace and good behavior. We will all be glad to get going tomorrow.