Wanderlust!

I always tell people that I'm nomadic - I've lived in ten cities in the last ten years - but they never really believe me until I sell my possessions, pack my bags and take off for parts unknown (or parts known, depending on my mood).

I'm not sure if this incredulous reaction to my moving habits is because they thought I was kidding or exaggerating, or if it is just a question of a blind spot when it comes a foreign lifestyle. I'm guilty of this spotty blindness myself. I always assume everyone is just like me, until proven otherwise. Intellectually, I may know that not all writers at the conference are at exactly the same point in their careers, but I forget that when I start talking to someone. Then I find myself inexplicably startled when I find that they either a) have eleven-thousand books published or b) haven't actually started their first book - the one they pitched to Patient Editor A when we met at the group pitch.

It isn't a conscious assumption. Just as I think most people do not consciously assume I'm not serious when I say I move around a lot. But they are still surprised when I skip town. Maybe it has to do with how I present myself? Do I seem too stable and settled to be a wild wanderer?

However I may seem, I'm embracing the rambler within. T-minus three weeks to get out of the apartment and hop on the plane to Hawaii. Then three weeks with my grandma (aunts, uncles, miscellaneous cousins...) in Hawaii. Then the real fun begins. I'll be back in Seattle just long enough to pick up my car for the roadtrip portion of my escape from the everyday. Destination: East. (Cuz if I head west, I end up in the Ocean pretty darn quick.) Two months in a car with only three weeks of that actually planned and pinned down. The rest? Wherever the road takes me.

So advise me, dear reader. Where should the road take me?