Waiting to Go

Nothing to be done.

It's Saturday night. I leave early Monday morning. After weeks in a constant state of panic over trip preparations, I have reduced the items on my to-do list to just one: pack. And I can't possibly start packing until tomorrow.

My passport lies inert on my dresser, stamped with a shiny Russian visa: single-entry, one month. My meticulously organized folder containing all travel and accommodation reservations awaits me from my desk. I am suspended between the chaos of planning and the chaos of actually traveling. Waiting.

Tomorrow, I pack, and then re-pack, and then obsess over whether or not I've packed all the right things and how much it all weighs. Then I distract myself spending time with friends and family, all the while secretly and greedily absorbed in thoughts of my next day's adventure. Then I prudently put myself to bed early and barely sleep a wink. And then, on Monday, I leave the country.

I'm very excited. I'm very nervous. And with nothing left that I can possibly do, the anticipation is a little overwhelming. Like the feeling I had on Christmas Eve as a 7-year-old, when I sneaked out of bed to discover the tree already brimming with presents I couldn't open till morning.

It seems interminable, but Monday will come soon enough, and suddenly the days will fly by, leaving me wondering if I ever had a spare second to just sit around and wait. So here's proof for my future self: here I sit, waiting.