Anticipation makes anxious an Anthony

My head’s clearer today, and not just because my cold is finally sliding away like Eugene rain down a gutter. Thinking about this trip, and how I’ve never done anything like it before, can be a little scary sometimes. (Well, that and I’m a born worrywort.) Today though, Sean came back to Eugene from Asia, and when he did, it was just what my anxiety-addled head needed.

Sean’s been in Bali for the past 2 months, helping our man Nick set up a new office and operation all the way across the Pacific Ocean. Sean was jetlagged, more stuffed up than I was at the worst of my bout with winter’s famed Cascade Crud, but his enthusiasm – at coming home, at seeing us, at planning and doing all the things in front of us this year alone – came through in his eyes and in everything he said to me and Chris.
All these past couple of months I’ve been trying to prepare for this Europe trip. I’ve read and researched, talked with friends, spouted fears and plans and anticipations and excitements into notebook after notebook while chugging down espresso. It’s a nice routine (especially the caffeinated part).
All my rants, plans and brainstorms have been making their gradual way to a special intranet we use to swap ideas and keep up with to-do’s and all that. I spout off my pseudo-analyses, my attempts at plans and planning for serendipity, my questions about everything from itinerary to what sort of personal digital wotsits I need, to how I’ll tend my goatee and keep up my smooth-faced boyish appearance while on the road.
Half the time, I don’t know what I’m doing. Fifty percent of the time, I’m utterly clueless if what I’m saying has any merit or makes any sense beyond it being written in the English that the guys and I speak in a more or less similar form. And the other half of the time, my head’s off in some new space that leads to – or so it seems to me – the germination and fruition of some of the loopiest ideas I’ve ever had. (That’s my favorite part.)
So when talking with Sean today, he started talking about all the posts I’ve put up, all the ideas I’ve kicked and all the suggestions and things I’ve been thinking about. “Ant, it’s just amazing,” he said. “You’ve got 5 months to go, and right now you’re probably better prepared for Europe than Nick was for Bali – and he was really prepared!”
It was great to hear that, and to see how much confidence he has in me, even though I don’t always have that much in myself when it comes to this whole Europe shebang. Maybe I’m doing a little more right than I am wrong. That works for me.
Hearing that – and believing it, knowing it for myself as well – clears my head. It reminds me that this trip is going to be great, that the details will matter, but probably not as much as my niggling brain likes to think.
Five months to go. And hopefully not another head cold between now and then. The doubts? They’ll linger. For a while. But like that Eugene rain once spring hits, they’re clearing out of sight too.