moving forward with courage

It seems that travel --spiritual and physical--has been a recurring theme in my journal entries. I think it stems from an ongoing existential crisis for me. I keep searching for meaning. Maybe that's at the root of why people walk the Santiago de Compostela Camino . I'd like to walk it myself one day. Pilgrims on the Camino are encouraged with the exhortation: "Ultreya"-- move forward with courage!

The way of the Camino is marked from antiquity with yellow arrows engraven on stones. Being mindful of the guidestones is an important task for the pilgrim to keep them on track. And they must remember that enemies will change the arrows and plant false ones. Moving forward requires a careful discernment.

In the coming week, my wife and I will be making another step forward in our life's pilgrimage.

I've made two significant attempts in the past at leaving my hometown with my family and settling elsewhere. They were not successful attempts in that, we returned. There were simply strong fetters of obligation, family ties, and (when I admit it) fears that brought us back. Why make such a move in the first place? Yann Martel stated the "why of it" very well in his book, Life of Pi. I referred to his observation and my identification with it in my journal entry Moving vs Traveling . In that essay, I concluded that distance traveled is best measured within. By that standard, our previous moves covered more mental distance than physical, but we still hit barriers, or boundaries, that we could not cross.

Now, older at least, we are on the cusp of trying again. Spurred by the relaxation of old ties, and an encouraging new job for Donna, we have made the commitment to another move. We'll begin this journey by driving to Columbia, SC next week so Donna can start her job the following Monday. I'll stay that week for moral support and to get her setup in an extended stay hotel. Then I'll return home to tie up some loose ends before joining her.

We're both excited and anxious about this move. It is a big change with risks and lots of logistics to work out. Donna is taking on a challenging job and I'm basically retiring (from IT anyway). Though I won't rule out taking another 8-to-5 job if need be, I'm more than fine with being a house-husband and otherwise working from home. You see, there are at least three novels I want to put out as quickly as I can. They are:

* My first Dentville novel ( Power of the Ancients ) of a trilogy about humanity's future living in a new ice age and where civilization has collapsed to a neolithic level.

* My activist novel about the ongoing horror of Stratospheric Aerosol Geoengineering (SAG). The working title is Prospero .

* Madam President . This will be a novelization of the short story by the same name that I have on Smashwords. It will be about dealing with the evil that has such a grip on our world.

There'll be supporting work for these novels that will involve revamping my author's website and creating a Publishing website. Maybe some scattered short stories as well.

That's where we want to go and the first step is to go out-of-doors and drive to Columbia.

I think it fitting that my first journal entry for 2014 was inspired by Ben Stiller's Walter Mitty movie. Like Mitty, we're challenging our comfort zones and leaving our safe places in an attempt to live in a wider world . And I'm hoping to find, like Tennyson's Ulysses:

...something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done...

I'll try, and keep you posted on my progress.