The little motel where we’re staying in Port Alberni on Vancouver Island is just down the street from the storage locker we’ve rented.  It will be home to all our ‘stuff’ until we figure out what we’re going to do next.

The car is packed with what we’ll be living with for the next ‘who knows how long,’ until we find our way into our next step:  2 suitcases with clothes, toothbrushes, deodorant, a few favourite earrings, etc; 2 backpacks with laptops, iPad (of course!), iPod (Yep.  Gotta have tunes for a road trip), digital camera (more important than the toothbrush), an inflatable bed with sheets & pillows (important to get a good night’s sleep along the way to wherever it is we’re going). And if we end up experimenting with living in a foreign country where it’s cheaper to live than Canada or the US, we have all the basics we can get onto an airplane without paying for extra luggage.

We’re going on the road. To visit with family and friends with an open-ended schedule and without even the slightest clue of where we’re going next or what we’re going to do.  We have enough of the ‘necessary evil’ stuff to put gas in the car to get from one place to another, food in our bellies and a tiny nest egg to, hopefully, carry us through on our next journey.  We definitely need a long term plan, but so far, neither one of us has a clear picture of what that looks like.  It’s intoxicating, actually. We only know we’re driving off into an unknown adventure as if we’re both 25 instead of retirement age.  Yeah.  I know.  You’d think we both fell off the last turnip truck and hadn’t been around the proverbial block a time or two.  Irresponsible comes to mind, doesn’t it? 

But if we’re going to live this life as fully engaged and passionately as we’re hungry to – to actually live this love affair with life as if we weren’t going to get out alive (hmmm… now there’s a thought), to savor more juice and flavor in life than we have been… then for us, it’s time to get on with it.  We have absolutely no reason (since life’s little surprise of the vanishing job) not to embrace this opportunity with gusto!

As we’re organizing and moving things into the storage unit from the scattered piles in front of the gaping door, my eyes are repeatedly drawn up to the sapphire blue sky.  The high, summer clouds are drifting in the light, summer breeze that’s cooling the afternoon heat.  Looking up, it’s easy to keep reminding myself that we don’t have to be done today – or tomorrow, or any day in the foreseeable future.  We can take as long as we want. Funny how foreign that feels.  No deadlines, no five year business plan, strategic marketing plan, no PR, no Google analytics, no measurables other than getting everything to fit into this 10’x20’ storage unit so we can close and lock the door and drive off into the sunset.  Or maybe sunrise is a more appropriate picture in this instance.

Gazing up at the fathomless, imaginary worlds in the clouds, I felt for the first time in a very long time, maybe since I was a kid, what it feels like to not ‘have to’.  To have all the time I want to look at clouds and let my mind drift along with them.  Is it a teapot?  An elephant?  A dragon?  To lay back and read a book I like with no rush to finish, to think about anything I want to think about without the stress-worm gnawing away at my insides to get off my lazy duff and get done whatever it is I HAVE TO get done. 

I felt what it might be like to breathe, just breathe.  Soak up the simple beauty of just being alive for no other reason than to delight in it.  Like I said, there might be a lot more to this adventure than I expected.