Prelude

Here we are: in less than 24 hours I'll be on a plane to Lithuania - the first destination in my Eastern European journey. It is exciting, to say the least. Exciting... yet frightening. The 'resignation-honeymoon', that high I felt after taking control of my life, has cooled off and given way to apprehension: I dropped my career and bid farewell to friends and family so I can throw my life into the unknown. That term -  the "unknown" - is no exaggeration. As it were, my decision to go to Eastern Europe is somewhat similar to walking alone in the Louvre at night during an electrical blackout in Paris and in the moon. Who I am and my personal/professional situation at the start of my journey will not be the same as that in the end. One of the countries I visit may become my new 'home'. I may continue working in the area of administration or become a teacher, a real estate developer, a butcher or work in a cinema. Or, by some blazing miracle, become a writer. Who knows? I've hit the reset button - the future, more than ever, is a blank page that I can write whatever I want on.

Yet I wonder whether I've not gone clinically bonkers this time. If that's truly the case, then I have none other to blame but my good friend M.D. To this day I believe she pulled an Inception-like trick on me by rummaging through the circus in my subconscious and planting the idea that is now hurling me into Eastern Europe. But I only jest, of course. My good friend, knowing how miserable I was in the environment I worked and lived in, asked all the right questions to get me thinking. She turned the light on - I decided where to go. The outcome may seem random and full of question marks, but it feels right. Only time will tell how it all worked out.

My backpack is ready - fat with travel gear that I'll need for the winter through to summer 2011. The more I think about it the more I believe I'm going on this journey to live out a story of my own creation, like I'm trying to escape the clutches of a stable and well defined life.        

So the journey begins...