Before the Beginning

It's been a long and slow build to this point, but here I am. My bags are (sort of) packed, my closet is (sort of) empty, and I'm (sort of) ready to go.

A lot of adjectives were tossed around in describing the "career move" Corey and I are making. Perhaps the most prevalent of all descriptive words was Crazy. How could we just pick up and haul ass all the way to the other side of the world and immerse ourselves in a culture we know little about? Now, I can't speak for Corey, but for me it was the answer was always sort of "Meh. I'll let ya know when I get there." Basically just jump out of the plane now, and hope the parachute opens later. And after that, hope you land right.

I really hope that metaphor made at least some sense. If not, I'll just have to come back and edit the hell out of this thing.

But despite trying to flippantly dismiss this with a skydiving metaphor, it's become a lot harder to qualify the trip like that. Because this isn't just a close your eyes and jump type thing. It's been planned for a long time. A long, long time. And now, I'm wondering if it was long enough. I mean, I still have so much to do. I need to buzz my head for christ's sake. And umm... get my glasses fixed.

I promise there won't be many posts like this once I get to China, this is just me taking a break from packing before I realize I'm actually done and ready.

I didn't write "and ready to jump" there. I'm proud of myself. Look, I'm already growing as a person.

Although, "and ready to jump" does have a cool ring to it. Very epic. But since that ending is already squandered, I guess all I can say is that it's time to finish packing, and I'll catch you all on the flip side.

- Shawn