Expect to see a lot more bloggage about Israel in my future.

I’m convinced that there’s a drop of a famous adventurer’s blood inside of me. Sometimes I wonder if this strange blood was overlooked because the pages stuck together in a chapter of my families history book. I can’t deny it’s calling. I’m some sort of a bastard child spawned from Earhart, Fossett, or Lindbergh. But I’m admittedly a cheap copy (with far less money than the afore mentioned travelers), even though the passion is there none-the-less.

It’s no secret that I’m not content with laying down in comfortable defeat within the confines of an office cubical at the ripe age of 28. At least not yet. While it may be my fate eventually (and I’m perfectly content with accepting this), it isn’t right for me now. I’m sure it isn’t a shock to anyone that I’ve still got the itch of realizing life. I’ve reasoned that leaving my job isn’t the end of the world. It’ll always be here. Or at least an almost identical corporate gig will always be here.

My tour in Iraq was certainly a catalyst for my Middle Eastern interests. It all began there. I am not the same person that I was when I left for my deployment. I’m sure there are many people that can attest to that. And the biggest change in me was finally realizing that if we want something, we’ve gotta just go for it. Or more importantly, we can’t live with regrets because (and please excuse the cliche) life really is far too short. Apparently, those aren’t just words we’ve been hearing since the first moments of our lives. For me, personally, it took having to see my own mortality face to face in the sand box to finally make those words mean anything.

I’m going to a land that I’m familiar with and feel a kinship to. A place that I can look forward to being with someone that I love and who can be my partner in discovering the beautiful and soulful place that is Israel. There is a strange connection that my life has made with that part of the world and the person that I’ve met there. It’s a part of the world that many people in the States fear and look at with digust and anger. I’m past all that. That’s the lazy way of looking at it. It’s full of beauty, history, guts, passion, and a country (I feel) that I fought for in Iraq just as much as I fought for America. The more that I educate myself and the more I analyze my life and what I want out of it, the more I feel the urgency to be there. And the most important part of my realization is that we should never be content with being content.

I’ll be studying there and writing and creating and doing everything that I need to do in order to feel full. It’s been in my mind and I’ve been planing it for several months but it hasn’t all materialized until now. I apologize for any shock this may bring to some, but I have a feeling that it really isn’t going to make many jaws drop. I think I’ll just get the, “There goes Jami again” response more than anything else. April is when I’ll be jumping off.

With that being said, I ran across this video from another world traveler’s blog that I’ve been following and getting a lot of planning guidance from. You can visit him at GoBackpacking.com. Lots of updates to follow.

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