As our Around the World Trip grows closer, the difficulties and set-backs started to ruin the picture.  I’d like to thank everyone for their advice, and, sure, I could further curtail the trip (lessen the number of locations I visit or even shorten the length of the trip to a couple of weeks), but I’ve finally decided to challenge myself with another approach – to Do Something Grand,  something huge.  To do something on such a scale that’s so totally encompassing, that every facet of everything I have ever done is entwined in the outcome.  See, this trip isn’t just about travel or visiting sites to me.   This trip is about me completing something more ambitious than I ever thought I would undertake, and completing it.  Come hell or high water, pbj’s or tuna fish, long flights or couch surfing, I will travel the world and return home.

I hope there are bumps in the road, problems that cannot be easily resolved, changes in plans due to the limits of my pocketbook because I want to know that when I finish, I did everything I could.  I spend every day of my life pursuing difficult goals because they’re my dreams, and I have decided that this is something very special that I must undertake.  I don’t know how yet, but me and my credit score are going to survive this.  As long as I have my camera, keys to my apartment, and my passport I am fine.  This is my chance to do something enormous – I’m going to see the world.  At 27, this is my One Grand Thing.

I don’t know when or why I decided not to be the type of person who uses credit cards, but I know I was young and I think it had something to do with my Grandmother.  See, I was the type of kid that grew into the type of adult who doesn’t listen to everything I’m supposed to, but certain things can stick in my head for so long that they become ingrained in me.  I can’t think of my Grandmother without thinking of her distrust for credit cards, and I can only imagine this rubbed off on me.  Whatever the exact reason the reason for making my choice was, I have now become this person who only recently used a credit card for the first time and has anxiety attacks each month in the days leading up to receiving the bill.  However, credit cards are only a symptom of a problem, which is ultimately my biggest fear, debt.

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Tomorrow I will be driving.  I will be in traffic, spending a large amount of my day eaking down the freeway, but, before I begin to flip endlessly through my radio presets, I will collect my thoughts.  Before it’s frustrating, it’s calming.  This time is my time, time to prepare for where I am going, focus, and think only of me.  I am on the road with thousands of others, but it’s private (that’s why people don’t think twice about picking their nose).

I may be in Los Angeles, but I could take this time to myself anywhere.  Driving is nearly universal; it’s the same here as it is in Nashville, as in Tallahassee, and Seattle, and around the world.  In almost any city, I can get behind the wheel of a car and zone out as I let my body almost routinely press the pedals and turn the wheel, driving . To me there is a serenity in knowing that I can travel, and, yet behind the wheel, a piece of home is with me; except in NYC.

I have traveled a lot in my life, and I’m very comfortable in strange and foreign cities.  Yet, whenever I visit New York City, I feel devoured by it; my thoughts get jumbled, I get anxious, and I race from place to place.   New York City is one of the few cities that demands you play by its rules and keeps the home field advantage.

If roads are the veins of America, then the NYC Metro would be the great throat I’m forced down along with everyone else above and below my income tax bracket. There is no rest in New York, every bit of the day is shared and foreign.
I love New York, and am considering moving there, but it’s an exhausting city. Even passing through it leaves it’s mark, and it leaves me wanting my me time.  Perhaps this is the same but in reverse for people who grew up in NYC.  Do they feel odd behind the wheel of a car?