Are you spontaneous like me when it comes to adjusting your day’s plans, or your lifetime destiny for that matter? Let me clarify a little; I’m a Space Cadet when it comes to making a plan and I’ve just adapted to being very flexible and minimally invested in setting my itinerary. One December I arranged for some extended time off from work to allow for a far away visit home. I thought I had prepared just sufficiently for my travels by clicking enough buttons on an airline reservation website, and I had shuffled a few official memos around my office to arrange for my absence. Literally the day I was planning to fly out I realized I didn’t actually have an airline reservation at all. I thought it was a little mysterious that my credit card was never charged and I never received any kind of confirmation. To some this might have been a devastating realization and a startling rebuke to take more personal responsibility.

Certainly I was concerned that I was just going to be stuck alone and far from home for my vacation. Sticking to my original plan was a bit of a stretch at that point since airline seats are scarce during peak travel seasons and last minute tickets are heinously overpriced. I wasn’t really that phased though since I’m sure I must have dropped bigger plans than that before, like becoming a doctor or a rock star. I stopped by a “brick, mortar and human being” travel agency that morning to try my luck at getting another flight out. If not home, I was open to a flight to a bombed out atoll in the middle of the Pacific Ocean or a bus ride across the county to a new McDonald’s I had heard about. To enable and even condone my negligence in taking positive control of my destiny there just happened to be a ticket available for the exact flight and the exact fare I had “planned” on.

Suppose you have a manic moment, restlessly shifting in the covers late one sleepless night, and you resolve that you’ve got to live life and get out to see the world you only know from snarky NPR programs and this blog. Forget about the sterile and detachted planning involved in booking an itinerary for one year from now, you want to be on a plane for old Soviet Anthrax Island or for the Terai land-roaming leeches Blood Sport next week. Your first consideration will be to disregard all of my posts from last fall about getting your vaccinations and your passport in order, as well as booking far in advance with a discount travel agency for international travel. Follow my example and obliviously check in at the last minute with some flip flops and a couple of shirts crammed into your day pack with the travel agency. You’ll have little more to worry about than aisle or window seat, and if you want to Super-Size your fries at that new McDonald’s.