Doubt

Why did I doubt that I could go on a trip and write a book? People do that all the time, right?

In my twenties, when I’d had quite enough of education, thank-you-very-much, and imagined that there was a lot worth seeing outside of California, an older friend told me about her idea to go on a trip of biblical length.

She took off for down under, touring Australia for 40 days and 40 nights for her 40th. I thought that was pretty cool. Secretly I was thinking, but what would be even cooler would be to go for forty-two days, to forty-two locations in Douglas Adams novels, for your forty-second birthday. 

That moment was the moment when I began to wonder if such a trip would be possible. For over twenty years the question stayed with me, unanswered, though SPOILER ALERT: My friend survived (and had a great time).

Douglas Adams wrote many fundamentally content characters, a curse that I too suffered from prior to my trip.

I’d reached a fairly significant life transition by making it, alive, as far as I could tell, to age 42. By the time my ultimate answer birthday came around, I’d been happily married for 12 years, happily relocated to my hometown of Santa Barbara, and happily employed as a consultant for a handful of select clients. My aging father had come to live with us after being happily pronounced “in remission” by his oncologist. It was a happy time.

The perfect time to leave. To leave for more than a month. To leave on a personally terrifying and professionally challenging quest.

So I hemmed, hawed, whatiffed, and doubted right up until I found out that Neil Gaiman was giving the Douglas Adams Memorial Lecture to benefit Save The Rhino. Then I bought tickets.

Once I decided to go away for five weeks (the longest time I’d ever traveled), to three countries (the most countries I’d ever visited), I told friends, family—anyone who would listen—that not even an angry god would stop my first attempt at solo travel.

That joke is only funny if you know what Kate Schechter, my favorite Douglas Adams heroine was going through as The Long Dark Teatime of The Soul opens:

Kate Schechter stood and doubted. All the way…to Heathrow she had suffered from doubt. She was not a superstitious person, or even a religious person, she was simply someone who was not at all sure she should be flying to Norway…All the trouble with the tickets, finding a next-door neighbor to look after the cat, then finding the cat so it could be looked after by the next-door neighbor, the sudden leak in the roof, the missing wallet, the weather, the unexpected death of the next-door neighbor, the pregnancy of the cat—it all had the semblance of an orchestrated campaign of obstruction which had begun to assume godlike proportions.

The Long Dark Teatime of The Soul by Douglas Adams

For me, there were no hitches. Firstly because I wasn’t hitchhiking. Secondly because, as I mentioned in a previous post, everyone was supportive, even my dad, even though I think he knew he wasn’t doing very well.

I acted like every responsibility in my life would be demolished behind me, as soon as I stepped on the plane, my normal world blown apart as if by a Vogon Constructor Fleet.

It was the only way to escape my doubt.

Because I had to leave behind an ailing father. And I had to convince my consulting clients that they could handle everything themselves. I was entirely unsure I should do either of those things.

I read guidebooks about the UK, biographies of Douglas Adams, and re-read his novels and nonfiction.

Somewhere in the middle of Hitchhiker, Last Chance to See, or maybe even So Long, and Thanks For All The Fish, I realized what I really needed to do upon turning 42 years of age. I had to prove that I could take care of myself. That I could travel alone in a foreign country. I needed to prove this so badly and so far beyond any shred of doubt, that I chanced the possibility that I was, in fact, Vogoning my current life.

There was a real possibility that I’d never get more consulting work. 2015 saw projects wrapped up and me refusing more, not knowing if there would ever be more to get. In fact, I haven’t had any more of that kind of work.

I made plans to spend 42 days traveling alone. Only for short periods of time would I connect with oversees friends or fellow fans.

But then, when it came right down to it, I wasn’t quite so resolute. My husband had never been to England either. So I invited him to join me for the first week.