Missing Out at the End
All the feelings as I approach the last stop on my trip from Cape Town to Cairo
How to communicate the anxiety, the feeling that, to begin with, I cannot believe that I am here and I get to do this madcap adventure, and now that I am and can, I had better enjoy it because I may never get to be back, on the one hand, and I better make it somehow worth it, work-wise, on the other? Maybe this is how mania manifests on the road, but I have a hard time letting up, lying in, as they say. And the guilt when I do — skipping my planned dawn visit to Luxor temple this morning, for example — the guilt threatens to crush me even as my rattled body thanks me. Or does it. I’m not sure a morning spent worrying about what comes next is any better than running myself ragged in the now.