To travel is to live

I’ll very shortly be taking a break. A break from the world, from WiFi, from emails, phone calls and from pretty much everything. My concentration will be on sun, sand, all you can eat and drink, Mrs DCF and a lot of relaxing and all you can drink.

Did I mention all you can drink?

Call it a factory reset.

Call it escapism.

Call it what you like, but your most valuable commodity is your own health; mental and physical.

So please don’t anyone think I’m being ignorant if contact goes unanswered for a couple of weeks; it’s just me doing a factory reset to escape and focus the mind ready to finish book 5 and start book 6 (you’ll have to wait until the end of Sanctuary to find out what it’s going to be called!)

That renewed focus will hopefully pave the way for the research journey I will undertake in October. As the stories have migrated, so must I to be able to do the amazing locations justice in their description.

My jealousy at Dan’s group taking such a long journey became a pang, then a small amount of wanderlust and has resulted in plans being made.

Not to spoil anything by giving away too specific locations, but the multiple thousand mile road trip I have planned will take me, and through the books you, to some truly awe-inspiring places in the world. If any of you are following my Facebook page, pictures will be posted!

Whilst the prospect of a very lazy fortnight eating and drinking myself into early onset diabetes holds great excitement, the thoughts of the road trip bring both equal measures of trepidation and gratification.

I’ve never been anywhere on my own, let alone organised a week long, three city, 2300 mile journey. You can see why this is a little daunting.

Still, I’ve recently acquired the perfect car for the beautiful switchback roads of [REDACTED] so the adventure still sits shoulder to shoulder with the anxiety. When I start to consider all the things which could go wrong on such a trip, I begin to wonder if it’s the right thing to do. If I can cope. If I can avoid having a meltdown if something doesn’t go to plan.

Not to over-share, but certain damage I’ve suffered has resulted in an occasional inability to process things properly; familiarity with some characters in the story will give indications of how Post Traumatic Stress Disorder affects different people in different ways.

So I see this trip as a therapeutic method of removing the fear in the unknown. To go with the flow, to enjoy the world and to come back and say; “I did that all by myself”

It doesn’t have to be a week’s travel to do that though. Small wins can build up to become a more positive outlook on life, on your own abilities and confidence.

One of my favourite quotes of any film is probably a little unexpected. It’s from The Water Boy, one of Adam Sandler’s more ridiculous offerings, and goes simply like this:

“You can do it!”