I don't technically leave the country until the day after tomorrow, soon after my flight departs at 1:10AM on Saturday. For me, the trip begins when I leave my apartment, enter the Uber, and begin the most dangerous portion of my journey: the trip to the airport.

My stomach is awash with nerves, waves of anxiety like writhing parasites trying to escape. Travel is uncomfortable. Masses of people are exhausting. Airplanes are dehydrating. My worries are entirely centered upon the transit from one location to another, when the weather, security lines, and air traffic control must all cooperate in an intricate ballet of human ingenuity and Godly goodwill.

Ok, so I am a worrier. All that is out of my control is the subject of endless rumination, continuous streams of what-ifs. The nightmare scenario in which everything imaginable goes wrong (ending in my untimely demise) becomes the only realistic outcome in my admittedly warped mind.

I've always loved the phrase, "the calm before the storm." My anxiety lives in this calm, creating internal energy from external stillness, when all I have to contend with are my thoughts. When the storm hits, as it will around 9PM tomorrow, I will finally be able to take action. Like a horse quivering behind its starting gate, at the count of 3-2-1, I will spring forward!

My muscles will flex, my bowels will empty, and my brain will have other matters to usurp its compute cycles. I'll be on the adventure, and the week of worries will be past.