Moving Right Along

I am officailly packed.

I am tired.

I have been up every night this week well into the early morning hours. I have given up entirely on even pretending to be on time for work in the morning. They don't seem to mind.

My last day at my job is tomorrow and there are about a million things I could write about how I feel about leaving. This job is what I would call my first "grown-up" job. I remember how excited I was when I started there over a year and a half ago about the silliest little things. My own fax line. My own desk. My own computer. My own fax cover sheets with my name and my title on them. It all seemed so legit. I felt very cool. Ah, naivete.

It took me a little while but within the last 8 months especially, I have developed some pretty real friendships. Leaving tomorrow is going to be hard. I might cry. I will promise to write. I will give hugs.

After I leave work, the plan is to get on the road by 9:30pm. Trav will be my road trip buddy. I am supposed to drive all through the night in order to stay on schedule. Travo will take over in the morning as I will most likely pass out in the back seat when that time comes. It is 16ish hours to the Grand Canyon from my front door. The plan is to be at the Grand Canyon mid-afternoon. Neither one of us has ever seen it. Hopefully, we will get to watch the sunset there. That would be nice. I will probably cry.

That night we are staying in a town called Needles in California at the Best Western. It is in the middle of the Mojave Desert on the border of Arizona and California. From Needles it is approximately 4 hours to LAX. I promised Trav we would eat at an In-n-Out burger somewhere on our trip. If you go to the in-n-out burger website, it will let you put in a road trip starting point and a destination and it will tell you all the in-n-out burgers within 2 miles of your route. I now know that there are 11 in-n-out burgers between needles and LAX. Technology kicks ass.

After a tasty west coast hamburger, it is on to the airport. This is where I will say good-bye to Trav as he is not going on to Hawaii with me. I will most definitely cry. He will too. It will be very sad. It will be very hard.

I have said good-bye to a lot of friends who have gone off traveling the country or even the world, but I have never really had to say good-bye because I was the one leaving. I don't really know which is more difficult. Leaving behind people you love so much and an environment that is your home is very, very hard.

But my spirit is at rest with my decision to leave. I believe that this is my season to scatter stones. I believe that no matter how hard it is to say good-bye, I need this time away. And so I'm moving right along on to the next leg of my journey. Don't worry- I will keep in touch from my mountaintop.