Into the void

I know this feeling... it's the same one I had in early August last Summer when I packed my life into the back of my car and backed out of my drive way on the way to California... I guess the best word to describe it would be "emptiness."

That's not to say that my life is empty, far from it.  I have an amazing family in Seattle, and some friends there that I wouldn't trade for the world.   I also have been blessed to meet some pretty great people down here in San Jose, some of which I'll be moving in with next year.

So what's with the emptiness? I guess it's the perfectionist in me, the idealist who is never satisfied.  When it comes to the painting that will be my life when all is said and done, I have a general idea of what I would like it to look like, but in the grand scheme of things I only have so much control over the brush strokes that compose it. Sometimes that one little spot in the top left corner that I've had planned out for the past 10 years gets covered up by paint running down from the area above it. Other times I'm minutes away from filling in the blank spot right in the middle, when I run out of the color I had planned to dip in to. These feelings are all too familiar, the sense of last minute panic, excitement, that feeling of planning everything out, and life saying "nope, sorry, we're gonna take a sharp left turn here instead." But, that's not what I'm feeling now.

No, this feeling is something else. It's when you've made a rough pencil sketch on your canvas of what you're pretty sure you want, but just aren't sure how to fill in the details.  No one you know has ever really done anything like it before; and up until this moment, you were doubting if you could even do it yourself.   It's the moment where the crazy idealist thoughts you've been having are about to become a reality, and you have no idea what they are going to look like as they unfold.  It could end up being one of the most gorgeous parts of your canvas, or it could end up ruining everything you had planned.

For someone who has a bad habit of always wanting to plan out the future, this is that moment of emptiness, where you really can't plan at all, life just won't let you. But that's what I love so much about it.  In a few weeks I'm boarding a plane to spend two months in Australia. This guy, the one who has never traveled off the west coast, whose only "abroad" experience is a weekend in Vancouver, Canada.  All practical reasoning says I should stay here, look for a job, network, not spend money on traveling;  but you know what... I really don't want to do any of that, so screw it.

I've come to believe that this emptiness is a good thing. Sometimes it's nice to wander into the darkness.  The stresses that come with always worrying if you are on the right path or not disappear.

Twelve months ago I came to a fork in the road: go down the predictable and established path, or head down the one less traveled. I came to a similar fork in the road several months ago, and in a couple weeks I'm about to plow straight down the middle, and right into the great unknown.

I made this blog because I think a lot, probably way too much, and I figured what better time to start putting these thoughts onto "paper" than now, as I prepare to head into the void. No matter what shape I come out in, I'm determined to take in as much as possible; so even if I end up living in a van down by the river, I'll have some pretty awesome stories to share with you all.