guts.

Sometimes I come here as though a new post would have been added in my absence, as though it were a different person who is getting ready to go on this adventure. Sometimes I can't imagine that it will be me. That it is me. It's still so far away, but the X's marking my calendar tell me that it gets closer and closer.

I've decided to spend the first year in Mexico and some part of me thinks that I may never leave there. I am so drawn to experience every part. I want to live in the colonial towns in the interior where the tourists never go, because why would you? Except that they are lovely. And I want to live in San Cristobal de las Casas because I fell so deeply in love with it when I was there last. But the rest of the world has caught on and I'm afraid it wont be the town that I left. Of course none of it will be. I was there 18 years ago. 1/2 my life ago. That doesn't even seem possible. It really feels like it has only been a few years. No more than five. I would love love to live in Merida and spend some time back in Tabasco. Of course a sleepy beach town has to be in there somewhere. There isn't enough time left in this life to properly experience Mexico, let alone the rest of Central America and South America and start a ranch and become the benevolent dictator of the world.

I finally start to understand the panic of growing older and realizing that you're running out of time. Trying so hard to understand that my past hasn't been wasted time, for it has gotten me to this point. but dang! it's so easy to feel like you've failed before you've begun. And what if I don't make it? What if these grand plans don't come to fruition? What if I have to come home, defeated by the grandness of my dreams? Will I be able to be proud of myself for trying at all? Or only disappointed that I wasn't able to do it? And if that is the case, will I find another grand dream?

I am grateful to this process for helping me to realize that it isn't actually that hard to make these plans. To bust ass to raise and save the money and desire and belief. I do believe that even if I don't make the entire dream in this go that it wont be the last attempt. I have to remember that this is just the recon mission. That I am going to scope out the terrain and to see what there is to see and learn what there is to learn, then come home and figure out how to apply it to the next trip. If I can find all that I need on this trip, that will be great, but I'm not quite ready to actually "go" if I do find it, so it's all okay. I'll still have to come home and start the non-profit and do the fund raising and get all the poop grouped and be ready to make a life time move.

And so the circles spin. From "this is easy" and "I rule" to "uh-oh, what am I doing" and "I'm not even going to make it a month" and "if I come home early I'm going to have to move to Montana because I'll be embarrassed to move back here" to "there is no one in the world more qualified to do this, you'll be fine." And in the end? it's still just my hot reality and it will be great, no matter what it looks like. Because that is who I am.

And I have good guts.