In seven days, my wife, son, and I will board a plane headed for Paris where we’ll catch a train and then rental car to arrive, eventually, in Uzès, France. We’ll be spending about three weeks there before heading back to Paris for a week, and then coming back to the United States (assuming there is still a United States to come back to).

I’ve taken multi-month trips overseas before, but not in about 20 years, and back then, I didn’t have a job or a wife.  Back then, life was lighter, and I was less burdened with belongings and responsibilities. I don’t really remember the preparation for my trip to Kenya.  I probably relied on my mother to pull together most everything for that, because I was busy in college, finishing up one semester.

I’ve just about wrapped up all my work that needs to be done before I leave, but just enough projects linger, requiring attention and time that I’m in that odd, liminal space of not quite working, and not quite on vacation. Like most people, I find this neither-here-nor-there state uncomfortable and unsettling. I find myself wishing simultaneously that I had more time before departing and wishing that I was already there, strolling the cobblestone streets and taking in all the sights and sounds of a fifteen hundred year old village.

I like being places, but I’m not sure anymore that I actually enjoy the process of getting there. Part of it is the weird security theater we deal with to travel, and the other part is that travel is much easier when I’m only responsible for myself. Being a parent and traveling comes with all new anxieties.

Still, I’m hoping a four week vacation means I can relax more and worry less.  Who cares if we arrive a day late?  Travel mixups can happen and not take such a huge chunk out of our trip.  At least, that’s the idea. last night I began to obsess over whether our Airbnb had a shower or just a bathtub, and whether it had enough electrical outlets.  It seems that I’m an aggressive worrier and even a longer trip isn’t enough to calm my nerves.

Once I get there, I expect to really experience things.  I’ve felt sort of experience-deprived living here in Kansas lately.  Kansas is great for a casual day to day life, but there’s not a lot of excitement and novelty to the Midwest dad life.  Finding a balance between comfort and novelty has long been a struggle for me, and so if nothing else, I’m looking forward to an entire month of people and places entirely new.

And in my downtime, I hope to read and write and think hard about what shape I want my life to take in the next couple of years.  Freelancing for the past decade has been great, but I’ve fallen into a bit of a rut with a lot of it and I need to think about what direction I want to go into next.  For the longest time, I thought I would transition into more writing, but that hasn’t panned out quite.  Although one possibility for when I return is launching a Patreon for ongoing Dungeonspace stories. I feel like I have enough ideas to write those for years, and maybe that crowd-funding method could help me start that transition.  Sometimes I think I’m a little afraid of succeeding as a writer, and self-sabotage or get too risk-averse.  These are things I hope to think through when I’m enjoying the French countryside. Have a great May without me, everybody!  I hope to come back with some brand new stories to tell.

PS: tune in next week for an important announcement!