17 June 2021 – I can do it all. I have proven it over and over again. I don’t need anyone to help me do anything. If I don’t know exactly how to do something, I can figure it out. I’ve always been this way for as long as I can remember. If for no other reasons than I hate asking for help, and I really hate to admit I don’t know how to do something.

As I get ready to head out with no plan and no one, I am more sure than ever that I can do it all. I can visit all of the places I have ever dreamed of going to. I can see the Grand Canyon and the Oregon Coast. I can go back to places I visited as a child and see if they still hold the same magic—places like Yellowstone and Estes Park. I can even visit places I have never thought of or even heard of.

Part of me is imagining wide open spaces as far as I can see and more stars than I can count. I imagine being Henry David Thoreau on my own social experiment, but instead of retreating into the woods, I am retreating into the world around me. But like Thoreau, I am searching for myself and my place in this society. If I am as lucky as him, I will discover that happiness and fulfillment are available if I listen to my own drummer. Like Thoreau, I do not want to die and discover I did not live. I know I can do it all, but I need to enjoy doing it all too.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.
— Henry David Thoreau

If I don’t experience an awakening or find joy on my adventures, I will be greatly disappointed; however, I am pretty sure that whatever I discover will have meaning. Walt Whitman wrote, “Keep your face always toward the sunshine – and shadows will fall behind you.” I am determined that if nothing else comes out of my travels, that I will head towards the sun and leave the darkness behind me. My adventure was determined by something written by Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” I plan to travel out of the darkness and leave a trail of sunshine as I travel. I can do it all.