2 1/2 Weeks

I leave at the end of the month. It sounds like a decent amount of time but half the month is over, and I'm left with just 18 days.

That's 18 days to see the friends I've accumulated in North Carolina in the last 7-8 years. How does one do that?  Quickly, I suppose, and in between that time I have to still try and get as much work as possible to save more money up because I won't be working on the road (maybe I'll find some, I'm hopeful), I have to edit remaining sessions that I've already done (and will do), and I have to pack. Fortunately I'm not a fan of collecting things and what I need to store I can put in my friends houses for awhile and the rest I'm putting in my car and hitting the road.

People keep asking me if I'm scared or excited. Yes. My emotions are running a gambit. Why wouldn't they? I'm taking a 15 year old car with 200,000 miles that I've had what seems like forever, and hitting the road with no destination with just me and my dog and I have no idea where I'm going or what I'm looking for. I want to meet people.  I want to get to know a little bit of everyone I meet on the road, and off the road too. I want to stay with strangers. I want to try foods I've never tried. I want to meet their family. I want to do things I've never done before. I want to laugh in ways I've never laughed. I want people that have never met me to call me a friend after I leave. I want so many things.

I've decided to continue what I started last year. I started a thing called The Happiness Project and it was a brief interjection of myself into random peoples lives and how they lived and where they lived and what made them happy. I made the mistake last year of doing video work with it, and I'm not a video guy. I don't know a lot about how to light, compose, shoot and edit video. I'm a photographer, and I know how to do that. So I'm going to take pictures of people in America and learn a little bit about them along the way.

I have 18 days, and I'm so anxious but this is my journey and its coming...