18 Days Until Departure

I'm sitting here at the wee early hours of the morning, trying to think of how to start this entry. I don't exactly know which route to take, and I have several available to choose from.

Should it begin with a basic introduction to myself for unfamiliar audiences? Fitting, but my mind isn't focused on my past enough right now to give a decent and proper introduction.

How about writing about what your mind is focused on then? I could do that, but again, I have several factors that my mind is focused on at the moment. It could be about the best friend that I struggle with having to leave behind, or about the journey and my cold feet towards it at the moment, about where I got the title for this blog from, or about that flame that never seems to go out even when you try to douse it with water.

I'll give the best of a basic introduction that I can to try to stay away from writing about topics that I am not ready to handle yet. I am Cody Hopkins, and about a year ago, I began to discover the possibilities of traveling as a lifestyle and as I began to research it more and more, it seemed like the answer for me. I worked in a cubicle for eight hours a day and I was paid decently for it, I had a decent townhome I could afford with a decent paycheck and friends that always were there for me. I had the finest green you can buy in my smaller town, and I could find someone to be intimate with should the urges present themselves. I had security both in my position and financially, and I decided to consider the option of giving up all of that to walk around this continent without a home or continuous source of income.

I always get the same answer when I describe that situation to people, especially considering our current economic crisis. Why would I give up such an opportunity at my younger age to pursue a path where I don't even know where my next meal may be coming from? Even if everyone didn't ask me that initially, I would've still asked myself the same thing and demanding some sort of an answer or explanation. I did have answers I had prepared for that so I could handle the constant barrage of the same question and originally, I had planned to use those same overused answers here.

The truest choices we make come from our hearts and not our head. I know in my heart that this is the right choice for me, and I've spent a year determining that. Nobody else can tell you whether this is the right choice for you either, but you will know if it is because of how you feel. Now, some factors came in that made me rush my decision along the way, but those are not for tonight.

Tonight, I try to get some sleep and I replay those words and sentences that were spoken over the course of the evening in my head all through the night, looking for my own answers to my own dilemmas. I don't think I will find it though, I think there may not be an answer that I will like to this dilemma.

It is 18 days before I leave, and I want a reason for the way things have to be.