i'm leaving on a jet plane....

i booked a flight today. to the opposite side of the country. to a city i've never visited before. to see friends in new places. just one month from now.

whenever i plan a trip, i get a feeling of trepidation in the pit of my stomach. i'm just a worrywort in general, but travel makes me feel something different. it makes me feel like i'm forgetting something. or like something horrible is destined to happen to me should i venture outside of my home turf.

what i forget, up until the moment i get wherever i am going, is that i will miss home. i miss the safety of my home and i miss the boring old routine that i was trying to escape from in the first place. ultimately, i am a creature of habit, and i am very reluctant to leave my sheltered cave.

that is why i made the resolution to travel and get out more this year. and i took it one step further, and decided to plan at least one trip a month. january's trip begins tomorrow, as i set off for vermont for the long weekend. and i just booked february's trip to san francisco. where will march take me? any one want a visitor? i'm clean and quite and not nearly as neurotic as i seem in writing.

anyway, the reason i want to push myself to travel more is that, when i am planning it and thinking about it, i forget how much i enjoy doing it. yes, of course i miss home and i get a little homesick. but when i'm on vacation and its time to go home, i am always sad. in fact, when i went on a cruise in october '06, i cried as the ship pulled back into port in nyc. i was so sad to go back to work and the real world.

so maybe that is the key to travel for me. in order no worry about what i am missing, i need to remove myself from real life while i'm out of town. i need to forget about what tv shows i'm missing, or how many emails are piling up back home (its mostly junk anyway!) or what my friends/boyfriend/family is doing without me. i need to enjoy the moment and live in it. i'm 25. time to start living and not worrying so much about it.