Yes -- I am stressed. It's been said that three of the most stressful times during life - in the average person's experience - are :

1) Death of a close relative / friend
2) Divorce (some say marriage too)
3) Moving

I tackled the first one when my mother passed away a little over 1.5 years ago. I've never been married so #2 can be thrown out. But #3 on the other hand - I'm living it with a vengeance and with a few more twists to make it even more fun! Generally speaking - the sense of confusion and disorder makes moving both physically and emotionally stressful. Packing, moving, and sorting takes a toll on energy and attention, and the chaos drains the emotions. Moving disrupts daily routines, contacts with friends / family, and financial status. For some during moving - the act of buying or selling a home is enough to give a few body blows. I sold my home about 6 months ago. As for buying - I was very close to buying a larger home shortly before my mom passed away. I completely changed direction when she did as you can see.

Moving to my current apartment was stressful - I downsized from a 2 bedroom condo to a smaller 1 bedroom apartment. A 50% decrease in living space. I knew I would have to do it again soon. Except -- this time it's different. There's no "place" I'm moving to - unless you count my truck or the few items I will send to my dad's home in Washington State. I sort and pack things while having to decide which things I can take with me while travelling by car for several months, and then determining what I should pack while living out of a backpack for awhile. Two completely different styles of travelling. I haven't even camped that much in my life -- so there's a whole set of things to figure out there. Most of the things I pack I won't see again for a couple of years. Making me wonder why I have them at all. Then there's the act of selling or giving away of things that there is no sense in storing.

Just as the thoughts that crossed my mind around the time shortly before and after the death of my mother rocked a number of foundations in my life, so does hitting the road for a long term after having lived a relatively stationary life for one's entire existence.

I haven't even mentioned my trip planning and preparation. Two notable ones that I have not mentioned before being:

1) Figuring out how I will live without access to my own personal computer for a long stretch of time (Years). This coming from someone who has used a computer for nearly every day of his life since elementary school, except for "short" vacations. Be it playing games (Long since abandoned), writing school papers, managing my finances, and as a livelihood.

2) Determining how to invest in a tough market climate when that will be your only source of income. Both what to invest / speculate in, and how to do it logistically from the road (Thank the powers that be for the Internet!).

And last of all, how my nearly entire belief system has changed so much the past couple of years (For reference - Sept.11th, 2001 rates a small blip even after I visited the WTC site two months after) and the mass of knowledge that I've absorbed from reading dozens of books on a wide variety of subjects (Amazon.com likes me alot).

Enough griping though. Soon enough, I will have finished breaking my attachment to the things and ideas that have cluttered and complicated my life or weighed me down. The freedom of the road awaits.

Today, I finished my first language course -- Pimsleur Spanish Level 1! That is 16 CDs! 30 1/2 hour lessons - 15 hours total of audio instruction, and the last CD that accompanies a small booklet to learn how to read . Learning to read after you speak is very smart. As I read along I saw how easy it would be to get confused if I hadn't already learned how to say the words properly. Existing ways of pronouncing English words would definitely get in the way - serving only to frustrate the learning process. Something you definitely want to reduce when learning a new language. I'm not sure how Pimsleur does it for learning languages with characters or different "letters" such as Arabic or any Cyrillic based language. I'll find out soon enough. I celebrated by going to eat at a small walk up window off PCH in Dana Point, CA serving Mexican food. I know it's closer to the real deal because it is next to a Mexican supermarket. I spoke enough Spanish to let them think I could speak it well enough.

The real test now is how much I retain as I tackle my next language and as time passes before I use it actively. Although, I'll probably go through Spanish Level 2 before South America so that will be fresh in my mind. I'll be starting Brazilian Portugese (Different than European Continental Portugese I'm told) soon in the meantime. Admittedly, I was starting to get a little bored with learning Spanish. So I'm looking forward to starting a different sounding language. Brazilian Portugese is similar to Spanish, but from what I've heard so far, different enough to be challenging.

It dawned on me that I don't think I could have focused my mind to learn another language if I was still working. Even at just 30-40 minutes a day (With pauses while listening), it is the mindset one has to be in to learn, not the actual time. Also, the nearly everyday commitment to going through the lessons for a month at a time. One of the things that's bothered me the last couple of years is why Americans work so much. After all, we are supposedly the most productive, wealthiest, and technologically advanced nation. Or at least that is what some people would have you believe. I'll talk more about this later in a future article how I believe that when you take any of these three in isolation / in a vacuum they are true. However, when you zoom out and look at the big picture of life and think about why we try to be more efficient, richer, and advanced you might realize that we can be very poor indeed. I'll leave you with this graph (In Adobe Acrobat format) from one of the largest, if not the largest benefits consulting firm - Hewitt Associates (I used to work there!). I found it on their website a couple of years ago. HERE