One Man’s Walk through life

Just Got My Ticket To South America

I got my ticket to South America yesterday… WOO HOOOOO

I leave for Bogota, Columbia on April 8th.

So, since I haven’t blogged this before, here’s the plan:

In 2 weeks I leave !ThoughtWorks for a year long sabbattical. After a couple weeks of being a bum in Denver, El Paso, and LA, I’ll leave for Columbia. I finally got a hold of Charles, and it sounds like we’re going to meet up there and travel together for a while.

I plan to eventually make my way to Buenos Aires, Argentina, to live for the rest of the year. However, the entire point of this year is to live in the moment, so it’s really more of an idea than a plan I want to keep my eyes open to any and all shiny new objects and allow myself to be distracted by them.

Why am I going to South America you might ask? (or you might not, but I’m going to tell you anyway)

I’ve been on the same road since I was 17. That was when I decided to go into Software Development. Nine years later, I don’t know if the path I chose for myself as a teenager is the one I want to stay on for the rest of my life. Maybe it is, I do love it, and I’m pretty darn good at it. But I feel like I’m not in a good position to judge while I’m on it, so this break is about getting off that path and looking around. Expanding my horizons, getting some perspective, I want to live in second and third world countries that have great poverty. I want to live in cultures that are very different from my own. Mostly, I want to live.

It’s going to be great to not be tied down at all. Knowing that everything I do, I do because I want to. That I can pick up and leave a city the second I want to, or that I can stay for a month if I want to. That I can work if I want, or sleep if I want, or eat, or write. Of course this is true anyway, but it will be good practice for when I come back. …if I come back.

Anyway, I’ll keep posting details, I’ll be taking a laptop with me to write, so hopefully these entries will be getting more interesting.

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