“Great people do things before they’re ready. They do things before they know they can do it. Doing what you’re afraid of, getting out of your comfort zone, taking risks like that–that’s what life is. You might be really good. You might find out something about yourself that’s really special and if you’re not good, who cares? You tried something. Now you know something about yourself,” -Amy Poehler

I am not ready. I don’t know as much as I’d like to know about Thai culture. I don’t know of every single school that’s looking for English teachers. I know way less Thai language than I thought I would at this point. I have not crossed off everything on my lists or done everything at home that I wanted to do. But I will never be ready.

When I’ve told people that I’m going to Thailand, a lot of times I felt like they were trying to stump me and ask me something that I didn’t know the answer to. And a lot of times, I was stumped. That used to bother me–a lot. Because I’m the type of person who’s a planner. Someone who wants to know every single thing that lies ahead. And when I didn’t know whether Thai people drank tea or coffee, I would freak out. Don’t get me wrong, there’s still plenty of freaking out to go around, but I’ve realized that I will never know everything, and that’s exactly why I’m going.

I have a big problem with the whole idea of traveling to “find yourself” in an Eat, Pray, Love kind of way. I’ve never read the book or seen the movie, so I guess I’m not the most reliable critic, but I think I have the general idea. You don’t have to uproot your life and move to the other side of the world to find out who you are and what you want to be. But let’s be clear: I’m not 100% sure who I am or what I want to be and I am moving to the other side of the world, so I guess it’s possible that those two resolutions may combine. But that is not the purpose of this trip. The purpose is that it’s something I want to do, end of story.

A couple years ago I made two promises to myself: 1. I would never go into education and 2. I would travel everywhere except Asia. Needless to say, things change. I guess I could have waited. I could have waited for a friend to be ready to come with me, or waited until I found the “perfect” position for me. But “if we wait till we’re ready, we’ll be waiting for the rest of our lives,” -Lemony Snicket (I honestly had no idea he was the one who said that until I just Googled it).

I’m thinking of this blog post as the first page in a book that I know absolutely nothing about. And how do you write an introduction to that?

I want to see new things and meet new people, and all the cliche 20-something Elite Daily blog posts that go along with that. I want to be really good. But if I can’t be really good, I at least want to know something about myself.