Now that I think of it, all my life seems to be a whole walk through milestones, deadlines, target dates, things to complete before then, concatenations of delays, and responsibilities of todays actions to tomorrow’s results, and so on.

Planning for this trip, is no less. When the coundown widget showed more that 5 months were to pass before the planned walk start date, it seemed an exaggeration, an overy cautionary and an excessive planning approach. However it may not be that way necessarily. Whether we like it or not, and unless we live like hermits, we have current engagements and responsibilities we cannot simply ignore. We cannot walk away from our current life and from the lives of whoever is interdependent with us, family, friends, business relationships, work colleagues, with no sufficient advance notice and to provide with the necessary assurance of support before, during and after my absence.

Last week I have contacted ny insurance agent to study what policy could grant me a safe repartiation in case of an accident. It may take another month to review and subscribe to the one that really fits my needs. The signoff of the Letter of Undertaking for the Leave of Absence from the company I work for, will take also some time, and so will the delivery of the books and other documentation I have ordered through Amazon. I have also waitlisted me on a mileage reward flight to Paris on Septemeber 1st….the release of the booking will need some time to be hopefully cleared. Oh, and I have yet to book my return flight from Santiago to Singapore through Milano.

Needless to say, the topic of conversation in the family is now mostly concentrated on the Camino, and the sharing is not only about facts but mostly in letting the positive influences of my project to sink in the minds of the people I care the most and helping them to go beyond passive acceptance into a full active support. I will start to hang maps of the Camino all around the house and will prepare the pins for them to track my daily progresses. I will have movies and other documentaries of the surroundings of the Camino for them to see what I shall see. 

I need to inform all my groups of Friends, in Singapore and in Italy, and respond to their comments, emails and blog postings, suggestions, contacts (there is always someone’s friend who has walked the Camino already…). I have also to organize the charity initiative to allow my personal sponsors to pledge for the kilometers I will eventually walk……

All this takes time. And this is also all about the Camino: breeding a steady mind towards a project which uses time as a central theme, and develops through the appreciation of time as the best companion of our life journey.

I also want to go through and document my thoughts, enthusiasm and fears while I prepare mentally for the trip. The spirit is already at an all-times high since a few days, that is since the projects is taking a concrete shape. On the physical side, I am not sure how to train so much in advance: maybe a few Sundays runs, maybe losing a few Kg, maybe controlling my diet to build up some long ago lost muscles…. this suggests the idea (alas, the engineer inside never sleeps!) to design a mood-o-meter to report the % of the development and attainance of the KPI. (Key Preparation Indices).

On the next post, perhaps.