What do you hope to accomplish during your six weeks in Europe?

A lot of folks have asked me this question, so I thought I'd answer it once and for all.

Nothing.

There is nothing I hope to accomplish during my sabbatical time in Europe.  Put differently, I have no particular goals for that time.  I really do aim simply to live.  (Well, I will also write daily, but I consider that part of living.)

Having said that, I have constructed the trip so that it puts me outside many of my comfort zones:

• I am sticking to the continent, so I will not be fluent in the language of any country I visit. 

• I am relentlessly refusing to plan or to commit to visiting any of the places many folks have recommended.  I want to wake up each day knowing that I could choose that day to go anywhere--but also knowing that whatever I choose, however it goes, I picked it with no external commitment or pressure.  I will never have an excuse to blame someone else. 

• I am not going to check with work at all.  The level at which I work is functionally an addiction; it's time to break that. 

• The utter lack of planning means I cannot fail.  I tend to use fear of failure as a motivator; I am removing that motivation.  

• I have never been away from home this long, so I will have to deal with all the feelings a trip of this length is likely to engender.

• I am not committing to blogging during the trip. If I write a blog entry, it will be because I chose to do so, because I was indulging in the joy of writing.  I need to get back in touch with more of the joy and less of the chore of writing. 

I want to be outside of my comfort zone simply because I want to see what it is like to live so very differently. 

I expect to have a grand time.  I also expect to find odd emotional traps inside me, dependencies I have never fully understood.  I feel that is all to the good.

I expect the trip may well change me--or not. 

Either way, I'm quite looking forward to it.