less than a month to go...

...before the ol' lady and I head off on our completely insane 4-month trip/adventure/trial-by-fire through Japan, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Australia, and New Zealand. (Just typing that ridiculously long list of countries makes my skin tingle with trepidation and impatience.) The anticipation is almost unbearable. Every day, every hour is a rollercoaster of emotions - mostly extreme excitment (I'm going to see Ankor Wat, Mount Fuji, the Barrier Reef, the Great fucking Wall!) dropping suddenly into extreme fear (of exotic diseases and...even worse exotic diseases). Will this trip just fucking start already?!

It's been a long time coming, a dream to see the world that I can remember having since I was a little kid, finally set into the beginning babysteps of real motion a few years ago - I had money saved, a job I was itching to leave, a then-girlfriend (now wife) who was herself free and eager for such an adventure; it seemed like the right time to "just do it, dammit." Then I got a phone call from out of the blue - the national hard-rock/metal mag I had been freelance writing for, Revolver, was looking for a new editor and the job was basically mine for the taking. As a longtime metalhead for whom writing is one of very few actual skills, how could I turn down the gig? I couldn't. And so the dream went on hold.

But in some ways it was an easy dream to put on hold. It's the kind of dream almost everyone has, but few people actually live, even though all it really takes is some savings (a surprising small amount, too) and the courage/will to actually make the leap. Recently when I told one of my coworkers what I was about to do, he said in a resigned tone of voice, "Yeah, my wife and I have talked about doing something like that...but we never will." Like I said, it's an all too easy dream to keep as just a dream forever.

But as far as I'm concerned, that is no way to live. Maybe I've just listened to too much metal, because if metal is about anything to me, it's about living life to its fullest and not sacrificing one's own personal ideals/dreams, not conforming to the whims of the flock, and not satisfying oneself with a mundane existence. So even though I know I just wrote an article in Revolver called "Metal Made Me Do It," about all the people who have used heavy music as an excuse for the fucked-up shit they themselves are responsible for, if this trip somehow turns out to have been a bad idea (i.e., I come back with the Dengue fever or some shit), I think I'm gonna use that excuse myself. ("Doctor, metal made me do it.") But if it turns out to be my dream finally come true (which I have a feeling in my gut, it will), well, then that's just because the ol' lady and I are two metal-as-hell badasses with the balls to actually seize the motherfucking day.