Chapter One - The Day Before Everything Changed

January 2024

Palomino, Colombia

As I sit here on this Colombian beach, next to a flawless Caribbean sea, with wind caressing and waves crashing, and no where I NEED to be... nothing I HAVE to do...I wonder. Have I arrived? Am I at the end of the movie where the person sips a Mai Tai on a tropical island as the credits roll, the quintessential symbol of a successful escape from the rat race and into a life of endless bliss?

It's a nice idea. It makes me smile. And I am incredibly grateful. But I also have discovered that in this TRUE life story, the credits don't roll, and the story doesn't end there. In fact, on this seemingly perfect morning, after more than seven years of global nomad travel, I woke up this morning feeling, well...was that strange feeling boredom? It was definitely an odd feeling, a new feeling, and one I had not gone to sleep feeling.

'Maybe it's not boredom", I thought. "And it's clearly not the feeling of regret. It is so FAR from that feeling."

Pause.

"Could it be loneliness?" No, I answered myself. I could use some company, but that too does not feel correct.

Whatever the feeling, in that moment, the one thing I was sure of was that that something BIG was shifting in my life. In my mind's eye I imagined the clanking of a heavy iron gate behind me, and I was filled with an urgency to race quickly forward into the future. Only I wasn't sure what direction I was being asked to go.

"What a crazy daydream," I argued back, shaking off the surrealness of the inner dialogue. "I have the means and freedom to go anywhere in the world," I reminded (or convinced) myself. "I can fill my days with adventure, or comforts. I am free," I declared, somewhat smugly, if not defensively.

"So, why then," asked the protagonist inside, "is there this sudden gnawing feeling that it's time to go somewhere entirely new, never before imagined. And I don't mean just a place."

Deep exhale.

This wasn't a conversation I wanted to have with myself today. It felt like a question without an answer. I continued to watch the ocean as the waves crashed to shore, as if the answers were somehow contained within them.

My mind wandered into the past, and my seven years as a Nomad. I remembered that when I first began my journey outward into the world, I discovered it was not an outward journey after all; it was actually a journey inward.

I began discovering who I was, but more profoundly, I discovered who I was not. I wasn't my job, my roles, my culture, or my country...I wasn't even JUST a nomad. I was a seeker. A questioner. A human being, who for the first time in my entire life, was not distracted by something shiny, whether work, alcohol, or a relationship...and I was able to go deeply into my own inner realms. And oh, what a world I had found. Or rather...a world I am still finding.

In my pre-Nomad life, when I felt restless, or unease, I could throw my self into work, collecting more things, or whatever distraction was being offered at the time (there was always something)...but now these tools felt like hollow illusions separating me from the deeper meaning of this bigger soul journey.

"So, if I don't want any of those things, what do I want?"

That is the age old question I think we are all destined to ask ourselves, again and again. Once we reach our desired goal, the question reappears. But for now, I just wanted to feel like I was on the right path. As right as it felt just yesterday. I did not know the answer, this time. Only the question.

"Okay. I surrender," I said out loud, and then I let out a deep sigh.

"What is next, universe...God..,.inner guide...whomever you are? Just tell me where to go and I will do it. Even if it means the complete upheaval of my nomad life," a declaration I made with heartfelt sincerity, mixed with slight undertones of pouting.

"Oh, so you consent," whispered back the inner protagonist. "That was all you needed to do. Surrender. And it's done. For where you are going cannot be reached with conditions."

Gulp. Sometimes I dislike the inner protagonist very much. And sometimes I equally love her/it. But almost always I find it disturbingly profound and prophetic.

Regardless of any misgivings, when the word "surrender," had been uttered, it was as if an irreversible spell had been cast, and I was immediately filled with a deep inner calm, and that uneasy feeling from the morning, whatever it was, completely lifted.

"Wow, what just happened?"

Feeling settled again, I pushed aside all my thoughts and continued into an ordinary day. Yet despite the seeming normalcy, I noticed an extra skip in my step, and an added giggle to my laugh. And there was definitely a new sureness about my future path that even out-shined the once unwaivering sureness I had felt just yesterday.

"Hmmm...this feels new..whatever this is, I like it."

And so my day continued, as an ordinary day. But a day, which I didn't know then, would be the day before EVERTHING changed.