We’re packing up, getting ready to relinquish our Charlottesville home next month. In a tiny house without closets, it’s amazing how many cubbyholes we’ve managed to create. Tucked under our end table, in a wooden box that my mother-in-law painted, are my travel journals—maybe 12 in all. 

Half of them deal with road trips taken when the kids were young. These I gave to our son Ryan, the family chronicler of childhood travels—the person who digitized hours of home movies spanning at least 60 years.

The rest of my journals cover smidgeons of the last 13 years. My journaling, including this blog, have been spotty at best.

But I did write about our trip to Morocco. It was November 2017. Ryan had joined us there, so as I cleaned out the box, I tossed this journal into his pile without a glance. Then one morning while visiting his home near Philadelphia, I read the opening page, tucked the journal into my suitcase, and brought it back to Charlottesville. In the last few weeks, I’ve thought about that first page—one that I don’t recall writing, in a journal that I don’t recall keeping. 

Here it is:

There’s that time you can never regain when you completely don’t know a place. In spite of photos, you can’t picture it in your mind in any 3 dimensional sense. It’s no more than a 2 dimensional snapshot. Defined borders. No sound or smell. A video helps, but it’s still incomplete, and right now as I write this, that is Morocco. It’s not fully formed. I’m on the plane, just lifting off from CDG (Charles de Gaulle). In under three hours we will land. Reality will fill in what now exists as a flawed and incomplete image. Of all the places I’ve gone, this may be the one where I’m the least sure what my reaction will be. But my guess is my reaction will be extreme. Love or hate. My expectation is Morocco will not invoke indifference.

This resonates with me as our life is about to change. For the first time in a long time, we won’t have a home for at least half the year. Our base will be Paris, but without residency, our time there is restricted. 

There’s something exhilarating about entering the unknown.

I now realize, it’s not exclusively about travel. I felt this way three years ago when I decided to do some consulting work for an old friend and had major doubts that my business brain could be stoked back to life. I thought it would be short-lived and ultimately miserable. Or worse, that I’d be embarrassed by my flagging skills. But it’s been three years now—an unexpected, and lovely, detour.

Similarly in 2015, immediately after retiring, I enrolled in an intensive month-long writing class in Paris. I was wracked with self doubt and way outside my comfort zone. But I absolutely loved that class and made life-long friends there.

Now, as I stand on the precipice of older age, it’s breathtaking to find myself once more on the edge of the unknown. Maybe I’ll go live on a Greek island for a few months and experience an authentic Mediterranean life. Maybe I’ll take Italian lessons or immerse myself in a yoga retreat in Nepal. Maybe I’ll keep more journals—vow to capture everything by pressing pen to paper. There’s something primal and meditative in the literal written word. 

Minimally, I need to capture my feelings as I move through this phase. The doubt. The fear. The joy. The sheer exhilaration in the banishment of indifference.

Categories: Life in Paris, Ruminations

Tags: Expat life, nomadic life, nomadic retirement, the world inbetween, Unusual retirement options