The Last Weeks before Leaving

Over the past weeks, as we approached our start date, the stress increased. A couple of weeks ago, when I just finished my bachelor’s, I was still quite relaxed, and I thought that I had more than enough time left to train, complete my gear and do all other sorts of preparations. I realized too late that there were a lot of other things that I wanted to do in those short weeks, and being quarantined because of covid didn’t help with my stress level.

Saying goodbye

was something that I underestimated. Instead of training, I spent the last 2 weeks meeting up with all of my friends. I tried to make the most of my last weeks before I would be away for half a year. Some of them gave me gifts that I can take on the trail, to remind me that they believe in me, and even more important, to remind me to send them some updates. The FOMO, something that I struggle with in general is kicking in more and more. I fear missing out on some of the important moments in the lives of my friends, as well I fear missing out on some really fun events. However, as I thought about this a little bit longer, I realized that for me this isn’t a valid reason to not go on this amazing adventure. I don’t want to wait around to do awesome things, because I am afraid to miss something else. And although I have thought about this, it’s still a little bit scary.

Completing my gear

was a bigger task than expected, as well as some other important preparations like downloading maps. At this moment, I am still missing sunglasses and a wall charger to complete my gear. Furthermore, we had a lot of doubles and just decided in the last 2 days which items we were going to take. If you are interested in my gear list, you can find it here: https://lighterpack.com/r/1qsgko. The list on there isn’t complete, but it can give you a good idea of what we will be taking. As you will see when you click on the link, I take a lot of things 0 times. These are things that my mom will carry, gear that I won’t start with, or extra gear in case we decide to split up.

Am I prepared enough?

Well, I don’t know, but there is nothing that I can do about it now. The trail consists of so many unknowns, and I can’t be prepared for everything. Typically, my plan in such cases is to just wing it, because I don’t know where to start. Luckily, mom is someone who likes to prepare for everything, so I can rely on her a little bit, and she also really forced me to do some preparation that I was postponing 🙂 Overall, with less than 12 hours left before our plane leaves, I feel both nervous and ready for the trail. There will be things that we will encounter that we didn’t expect, and I wish I had trained a lot more. And even though I don’t know if I am prepared enough, I am curious to see what the next 6 months will bring me.