The journey begins

You catch up with me on the A24 autobahn on my way to Berlin. Nothing inherently interesting in that, I hear you say, and you would be right. The road is full of people, all travelling, like me, to Germany’s capital city.
But very few of them, if any, will have chucked in their jobs, rented out their flat and put their ordinary life on hold to make the journey.
I have. Six months ago, sitting in a Turkish café in Hawick, a small town in the Scottish Borders, my husband and I decided we had had enough. Enough of work, of the daily commute, of the relentless march to the weekend, enlivened only by a glass, or two, or red wine. Our weekends had turned into a two-day grind of domestic chores –stopping only to read the Sunday newspapers and mainline Fairtrade coffee.
Our careers had ground to an impasse. I had spent the last few years working in government communications, but that fascinating period of my life had come to an end last May, and I wasn’t yet ready to become a full time communications consultant – whatever that is.
And Nigel my husband, a gentle, hard-working, very clever economist had had enough of poring of labour market statistics.
There must be more to life than this, we cried as we entered our middle age. There was nothing unusual or particularly interesting about our state of mind. This plaintive plea can be heard across the UK, in sitting rooms, offices and commuter trains every moment of the day, and deep into the night.
What was perhaps unusual was that we were reckless enough, or sufficiently courageous, depending on your point of view to say, “right, that's it, we’re off.”
We had inherited a small amount of money – sufficient to pay off the mounting credit cards that had financed the numerous treats that had kept us sane over the last decade – so we did the only sensible thing open to us. We decided against solvency, put enough cash in the bank to service our direct debits and are about to blow the rest on a seven month tour of Europe and south-east Africa, finishing up on the East Coast of the USA helping out in the campaign to elect Barack Obama as the next US President. www.barackobama.com
What will we do when we return to home to Edinburgh? Who knows, because I sure as hell don’t, but that is what this journey is all about.
We have thrown all our cards up into the air: financial, career, personal. It is going to be fun watching where they land.
A final word about the title of this blog. I had originally planned to name it The Road to the Stars, as one of our destinations is Lake Malawi, one of the most beautiful places in the world.
But a friend of mine, Andy Nicoll has just had his first book published – The Good Mayor. I was lucky enough to read an early manuscript, nearly three years ago. It is an amazing book of love, redemption, and the search for something more than the mundane. I urge you to read it, and then you will understand why this is called the Road to Dot. http://www.lovereading.co.uk/book/2585