170 Days in 2011

As of August 8, 2011, I will have been alive 9,819 days. 207 of which were spent in Iceland. That's 2% of my life. A very small amount that made a huge difference. 

Here, I made a pie chart:

You can save that to your hard drive in case you need to reference it later.

I'm leaving Vík in two weeks. Fourteen days. 336 hours. It's really starting to hit me that I won't be living here anymore. This place has really become my home. It's a little scary to think about leaving, and not seeing the ocean and the peaks of Reynisdrangur every day. No more skyr or slátur or mountain moss tea. No waking up and wondering if a volcano erupted because the sky is so oddly dark. No more Arctic terns or puking fulmars or little puffins. No more Æsa, Þráinn, and Addý.

...Wow.

This may be the first time in my life that I've been officially homeless. That's one way of looking at it, of course. I could also say that I'm completely free. I don't have much of a plan right now for what to do next. But I've never been very good at making solid plans, because I've learned that they always change in ways that are completely unpredictable. For example, I just re-booked my flight to avoid Oslo. Of all the places in the world to be hit by such a tragedy, Oslo was definitely pretty far down on the list. I don't think anyone saw that coming. What an incredible shame.

To avoid trouble in Norway, I'm now flying into Warsaw and spending a few days in Poland before meeting my friend and heading to Slovakia. I've been planning this trip for over a month and I'm really excited, but it's also starting to get stressful. Any change is stressful. That's the definition of stress. Everything always works out for the best, so I'm not worried about anything...just unsure of what to expect. And that's ok. It's what makes traveling so much fun. 

Unfortunately, the way I deal with stress is to completely freak out for about twenty minutes and run through at least a dozen completely different options like a bird flying at all corners of it's cage. I get so overwhelmed at all of the choices that it seems impossible to chose one. I always moan about how I wish there was someone in my life that could just tell me what to do every time there was a decision to be made. It wouldn't matter if it was right or wrong, she would just have to tell what to do so I wouldn't have to deal with it. 

Then after twenty minutes of overreacting, I make a painful choice and immediately feel great. There's sort of an emotional rush associated with it that I'm a little addicted to. 

Again, it's unfortunate that this process works so well for me, because it tends to irritate those around me (at the very least) when I talk and talk about every single option in the world that is available. It must sound completely insane. 

But no matter. I made a choice and I'm happy with it. I've wanted to visit Poland for about ten years, and this way I get to spend more time there before heading to Slovakia with Michal. I'll have to come back and visit Scandinavia some other time. 

I'm still waiting on that memory card so I can use my camera again, but hopefully it will arrive sooner rather than later, that way I will be able to take photos of the trip and continue updating these blog posts. As much as I'm going to miss calling Iceland my home, this should be a very interesting journey and I can hardly wait to get started!