Sunday was pretty bad, Monday was a  little worse but Tuesday, Tuesday is a day that will go down in history as one of the most stressful days of our lives.

We have spent every waking (and some sleeping) moment over the past 3 days cleaning, painting, scrubbing, washing, packing, and trying our best to squeeze all of our worldly belongings into a few surprisingly small plastics tubs.

We had to be moved out of our house by 2pm today and it was a race to the end. We finished with literally 5 min to spare. We would have been done earlier had this Indiana weather not wanted to say its goodbyes to us. By 11:00 there was a thick layer of ice over everything making moving hazardous, by 5 the ice was gone by only because the torrential rains had washed it away. We have spent the majority of  the past week cold and wet. I checked the weather in La Ceiba, Honduras, 83 degrees. We are very ready for that.

Earlier this morning, I (Lin) did something that officially brought to a close all the work I’ve been doing for the past 3 1/2 years: I graduated college!! Funny that all I seem to have to show for my hard work is an empty red binder and a very, very large tuition bill.

I busted my ass (*especially* this semester!) going to school full time and often working two jobs, and today all that work finally came to an end. It was even better that President McRobbie’s speech was about accepting change for the better and being able to embrace it without fear. It was a helpful little extra boost of encouragement that makes this overwhelming undertaking seem almost manageable.

One thing I really do regret is not having spent more time on campus socializing and networking. It was a lesson learned too late: that working is not as important as enjoying school, friends, and the whole experience of student life. But if I did learn one thing, it’s that I don’t have to follow the beaten path. I always found myself very unhappy and confused when it came to choosing a set path of study and eventually a career. I wanted to learn too many things from too many different areas to pick a single road to follow for the rest of my life. I knew that I didn’t want to waste away at a job that I didn’t enjoy and go home to a house I can’t afford full of junk I don’t care about and it took me a long time to fully realize and accept that this “usual” life sequence is not the only way to live.

So, I thought of things that I really liked doing and traveling was always the first thing I would (and still do) think of. Every time someone asked what I planned to do after graduating college, I would mutter something like “I have no idea” and mention in passing that I hoped to find an awesome job that allows me to travel extensively. I realized that every time I talked about traveling my entire mind and body would light up with excitement. So here I am, only a few days from embarking on a ’round the world adventure. This isn’t a job of course but it’s what I really want to do, not for anyone else, just for me. Maybe when I have to stop traveling for a while to save up more money, I can find a job that will capitalize on my worldly adventures but until then I am happy being a frugal (and sometimes dirty, hungry, tired,…) backpacker.

Well today was my (Saben’s) last day of work and I feel a little strange about it. I have never been unemployed since my first job almost a decade ago and have always thought of my job (this one or previous ones) as a way to classify myself.

One of the first questions people ask when meeting someone new is “what do you do?” and the answer is always “I work in …” or “I work for…”. As a society we classify our lives by our profession, not by the things that we love or enjoy or hold dear. I believe it’s this classification that I feel is strangely missing. I feel free to classify myself by the sum of my life and not by how I pay the bills.

I really did enjoy the place where I worked and the people there were fantastic to work with, yet I still feel happy leaving. Not because I don’t have to “work” anymore– I find satisfaction in the work that I do, but I am happy because I feel a sense of freedom. Freedom from the 9-5 (or 7-3:30 in my case) scheduled life, a freedom to not know what day it is and not care that I don’t know what day it is, but most of all the freedom to go to bed at night and have no idea what adventure awaits in the morning.

It would be lying to say that I am not a little scared about leaving my (very) stable job in the middle of a recession. I know that there are many people out there struggling to find a job or hang on to the one they have and here I am throwing mine away, but I do feel that this adventure is worth the risk. As much as it is cliche to say it, this really is a once in a lifetime opportunity. I will have the rest of my life to work and be stable. For now I want instability, I want adventure, I want the unknown.

So what do I do?…I live.

We are definitely starting to feel the pressure of leaving. This trip has been in “planning mode” for so long it’s proving difficult to make the switch to “leaving mode.” Today was one of those harsh transition days. Tonight we made “the list”, the list we had been dreading for sometime. “The list” is everything we have to do to shut down our lives here and it is huge! We have been chipping away at this list but there are so many things that have to be done in the last week that its still pretty extensive. The trip is really starting to set in and we are definitely a little anxious. I wish we could just get the hard part over and fly out today.

This has been quite the week of “lasts.” This is our last week of work, last week of school, last week in our house, last week of being sick from eating too many White Castle burgers…. While in some respects this is extraordinarily liberating, in others it’s somewhat sad to leave the life that we have been building over the past four years. But even with that in mind, we are confident that the new life we are about to forge will be bigger and better.

On another note, the site is coming together well. Did some code cleaning last night and fixed a few bugs. We are still missing some content on the Packing Lists and Cost pages but we plan to have that up either tomorrow or Thursday so be on the look out for updates!

Yup, 10 days. For the past 3 years we have been preparing ourselves for this moment and it is a short 10 days away. After a long, uncomfortable series of jabs and physical examinations (cough), we are about to head out for the adventure of a lifetime. Right now, we’re freaking out, stressed out, worn out and a maybe just a litte bit excited too. This blog will be a chronicle of our trip, our public diary, our therapy and our contact with the world back home. Here you can find photos and videos of our journey (not yet but soon). In the details section you can find tons of information about our trip like maps, packing lists, and how much this is going to cost us. The website is still in the works so there might be a few small bugs and pages lacking content but that should change pretty quick in the coming days.

So, Welcome to SabenandLin.com, please keep your hands and feet inside the car at all times and enjoy the ride.