This all began with an email I flippantly fired off to Dave one Monday morning.  It was semi-prompted by the look on his face late the previous night as he anxiously checked his blackberry for the sixth time – from bed.

In that email, I proposed a hastily constructed list of ‘next steps’ for our life, the first 6 of which went exactly like this:

1. Book 2 round the world plane tickets
2. Quit our jobs
3. Sublease our apartment
4. Pack
5. Get on an F-ing plane
6. Travel until we’re tired of it

And, while the list goes to 17, there’s no sense in getting ahead of ourselves here.  What matters is that, as I write this, We’re just days away from number 5 (the previous 4 are in the bag).

For a long time, this was just something we talked about with dreamy expressions on our faces – tipping our heads to one side every once in awhile, as if it helped us give the topic a more serious level of consideration.  It was true, we felt the need for a re-set.  The path we’d been barreling down was headed straight for kids and a dog and a mortgage – all fine things, no doubt, but when they suddenly showed up as small specks on our horizon we panicked.

And then we tapped the breaks, this ultimately in the form of a one-way ticket to Paris.

A part of this process has been accepting that this might in fact prove to be a massive mistake.  Maybe that’s what you’re thinking, too?  Don’t worry – we’ve seen the alarmed expression on our friends’ faces – it’s the same look that’s been on our own.  And it’s not about the trip itself, but rather: what happens if when we return it’s 2008 all over again (reference #2 above)?  A fair concern, indeed.  But in our less practical, more soulful moments we say with confidence: If this turns out to be the biggest mistake of our lives, well then it’s the exact sort of one we want to make.  We don’t want our mistake to be that we never tried.

Our flight takes off at 8am on September 1st.  The reality of this situation, despite that I’ve now had months to grapple with it, won’t likely hit me until 5:30am that morning, when we stand in our kitchen – backpacks on – and take one last look around before heading out to the waiting cab. Because, really, how does one mentally prepare for a trip like this?

It would be a stretch to say we have an itinerary.  Rather, we have a laundry list of countries we hope to visit.  Over the past several weeks, I’ve rattled off these countries with the same air of nonchalance I might use when reciting the recipe for a homemade salad dressing.  I don’t mean to seem blasé, rather, it’s that these places don’t yet feel real.  The countries themselves are still not much more than the glossy covers of Lonely Planet books, and their towns and cities are simply the words I type into airbnb.com.  And, while I’ve hesitated to place too high of expectations on this trip, I think it’s safe to say that by the end of it these places will be relieved of their mythical status.

How long will this be?  We’ve thrown out ‘six months,’ but are realistic about two things:

1. If we actually plan to see all of the places on our list at anything less than breakneck speed, we will need far more than six months (something we’re open to).

2. We very well may not make it even three.

As for which way this goes: your guess is as good as mine.  Stay tuned…