Books, Bookings and Beginnings

Years ago a group of us went out for lunch at a Japanese steak house near the office in Mississauga, and on the way out of the place we got the obligatory fortune cookie for that little extra bit of sugar to help us through the afternoon, and of course, the fortune. Now fortune cookies as we all know are astounding in their clarity of vision, precision, and offerings of direction for daily living. They are the snack equivalent of a horoscope. They are a tweet with a special crunch.

Okay, no, generally they royally suck.

But I cracked this one open, popped the cookie bits in my mouth and immediately failed at reading the french phrase I found pinched between my fingers. I flipped my fortune (good title for a Home & Garden TV show if someone was looking) and was greeted with the following:

"Be prepared to modify your plan".

Now, honestly, this was pretty cool. It's excellent advice. For anyone; and certainly for me. Not something I'm good at though. Embracing change - yes it's one of the TELUS, who I work for, corporate mantras, but still, something I'm not the best at, though I do try.

I pinned this little bit of fortune ticker tape to my cubical wall back at the office, and ever since have tried to embrace the simple message. Tried to not hold on to my preconceived notion of how something should be, and allowed for ideas, plans, whatever to morph as they go along. I have failed more at this than I have succeeded.

When I finally officially moved out of that desk a couple weeks ago I took down that fortune and put it in my wallet so that I could pin it up at my new desk. I haven't done that yet. But I did actually pull it out of my wallet at a meeting today and shared with a couple of folk.

Anyway, I say all this because I'm quickly realizing that with this blog, not to mention with this trip, I need to be prepared to modify my plan. I'll likely be saying it a lot over the next year - or perhaps I'll start living it more. We'll see.

In the case of this blog I had laid out a strategy for how I was going to tell the story, the parts, the dramatic one liner cliff hangars that punctuate a deep thought that should resonate with anyone who reads them. The long descents into past stories to add poignancy to current events. The serialization of the story that got us to this point. I would spool it out, reel readers in. Captivate.

Yeah. Um. No.

I've currently concluded (I expect like LOTR Return of the King that there will be many conclusions) that my good intentions on what to write "next time" will continue to fall by the wayside based upon what is clambering around in my head and driving me to write at that given moment. This will work great on the road, but for the present it's kinda conflicting with what I thought I was trying to do.

This has been the long way of saying: I'm gonna get back to the "why we're doing this story and how those two TED Talks are relevant" story later. For now I wanted to quickly write about two other things that have happened in the past couple of days.

Books
As part of preparing for this trip the boys and I have decided to get rid of a lot of stuff. Essentially go through all of our belongings, determine what actually matters to us, pack it away safely, and then give everything else away. Now, we have serious amounts of stuff. Not nearly as much of either of my parents - but ya, I come by it honestly, and am passing it on to Noah and Jake.

I have many, many books. I love books. I would say that books have always been a big part of my life. I read a great deal, and used to read to the kids every morning, and I think like my parents, have helped to instill a love of reading and books into Noah and Jake. I also really like owning books. Actual books too. The physical kind. I like bookshelves stuffed with books, and our apartment continues to find room for additional shelves as the existing ones begin to overflow. Books have been a huge part of my life for as long as I can remember, and I would say that a not-insignificant amount of my identity is founded on my books.

So when we decided to reduce the amount of stuff, I knew for me that that meant going in and reducing my library to the books that really matter. This has turned into a wholesale slaughter. My forest has been reduced to a few stumps and brush. And no, it's not quite that bad, but man does it feel like it.

And the thing is, it's one of the first things to really make this trip, and all it could be, very real. And it's scary. And it's uncomfortable. And it's totally the right thing to be doing, and like many right things, it's kinda hard.

We'll see how far I go with it. But it's a beginning.

Bookings
So, the other thing that has made this very real is that this evening I booked our flight to London, UK via Reykjavik on Iceland Air. So on July 15th we are officially leaving Canada. I have my friend Parvez to thank for that.

I had gone to the passport office this morning to get the kids passports updated. The ones they have are current but will not have six months left on them by the time we're nearing the end of our trip, so I needed to apply for new ones for them. Apparently I did not have the right paper work, so will go back Wednesday to continue that process. I'll write more about that another time.

I've been pretty anxious about getting the passports because for some reason I'd gotten it into my head that I needed the passport information to purchase the plane tickets. I swear to you I've seen this somewhere when actually trying to purchase online.

Now this afternoon Parvez and I were waiting on a meeting to begin and he, being the very kind individual that he is, asked how things were going with the planning, and if I had booked anything yet. I told him my passport story and lamented about my need to get new passports before booking any flights, but being anxious to book the first flight and make this all real through a financial transaction. Aside from being kind, he is also smart and therefore was able to gently tell me I was wrong, I did not need my passport information to purchase plane tickets. We tested this theory, and sure enough he was correct.

I almost purchased the first tickets then and there but thought that I should wait till I got home so that the boys could share in this momentous event. They did, but I'm pretty sure it was only to humour me. Which is fine, I like to be humoured. Apparently buying plane tickets online does not have the same impact on teens as it does me. Oh well.

But it's another beginning.

I've also decided to keep that fortune in my wallet. I think it's going to come in handy over the next year.