Countdown: Day -238

Just 238 days until my day of liberation (i.e., 01/01/2010).

Liberation from what? Good question.

Well, to start, here's some context. In yours truly's 28 years of existence to date, the main eras are as follows:

• Sheltered Innocent (Years 0-18): Cushy life growing up in a wholesome Midwest family
• Sailing through Studies (Years 18-22): Cushy life coasting through private college education on my Daddy's dime
  
• Under-Managed Entry-level Peon (Years 22-24): Cushy (though underpaid) life in a New England suburb, running my own small kingdom as a pretend journalist. This is also when I got my body art - spurred by equal portions of boredom and rebellion
  
• Semi-Liberated (Years 24-25): Financially stark but stimulating life as an aspiring real journalist, covering the world's emerging markets from the bullpen in NYC
  
• Over-Managed Corporate Peon (Years 25-26): Selling out to "The Dark Side," i.e., beginning a life of corporate slavery in exchange for aggressively inflated financial compensation (who said your soul is priceless?).
  
• California Cool (Years 26-28): Pretending to be all laid back and liberated, but in reality, just a less dark, lesser-paid version of the OMCP.
  

So in part, I've got a bad case of wanderlust after staying in the same place for almost two whole years. But more importantly, this so-called liberation is a movement away from this mostly cushy way of life, which in hindsight isn't really a life at all, and shift from existing to living.

And I'm taking the skydiving sans parachute approach (rather than the skydiving with parachute approach, or the bungee jumping approach). Not lining anything up after formally extricating myself from the current situation (to be discussed at length later).

Yeah yeah, sounds like the beginning of a quack lecture on "finding your spiritual side," or perhaps a rationalization of surrender to my narcissistic side. Well, I hope that's not what this turns into, because that is entirely not my intention. However, I can't guarantee that after a few months (years?) of food rationing and financial desperation, that I won't start sounding kinda wonky.

p.s. I thought about starting this on -237, but considering I've never had the guts to watch The Shining the whole way through, that would just be a bad way to start off this whole thing.