As I write this, it is about an hour or so before I head off to the airport in order to begin a long and busy journey across three continents (four if you count things geologically instead of politically and culturally). It is about 2 in the morning, I am sitting in a mostly dark living room in one of my favorite places, the home of some dearly beloved friends who happen to both be distant cousins of mine, my space illuminated by a small lamp on a nearby table as I sit in my usual spot in the corner of the living room next to a window that looks out onto the area next to the front door. Most of the members the family of my friends are still asleep, or at least seem so, except for one of the adult sons of the family who still lives at home and is playing computer games and noting with anger the behavior of opposing players of the multiplayer game he is playing at this late or early hour.

For many years, I have felt a certain sense of nerves when a journey is coming up. While I am, for a variety of reasons, very much acquainted with anxiety, the nerves of a traveler do not strike me, at least, as a particularly negative sort of anxiety. There are crippling types of anxiety that make it hard to live life well, but this sort of nerves is not of that category. Rather, it belongs to the sort of anxiety that is experienced by a variety of people who engage in tasks that involve a bit of risk, a bit of adventure, and the hopes that things will go well alongside the reality that they may not. As someone who engages in public speaking, usually related to religious services, this sort of nerves exist when one is about to speak, having done one’s preparation and hoping that the message will be well-received by one’s audience. As someone who sings and plays the viola, this is the same sort of anxiety that one feels as one approaches a performance, having practiced one’s music to the point where playing or singing is largely muscle memory or memory of the lyrics, but where one still faces the verdict of a crowd one hope to be friendly. As someone who spent many years in school, the same sort of anxiety is faced when one is confronted with an exam upon which one places one’s hopes for educational and professional advancement, having studied long and well, but where a verdict awaits. Other professions likely feel the same sort of anxiety as well, including the lawyer or witness facing a court appearance or a jury or bench verdict. I have also felt this sort of anxiety when asking someone out on a date, that mix of anticipation along with the nerves felt at the possibility of rejection. In all cases, this anxiety is present wherever one is dealing with that mix of hope, anticipation, preparation, along with performance and verdict.

How does one deal with this as a traveler? Though I am by no means an inexperienced traveler at this point in my life, I am not someone who travels often enough to feel jaded about it nor as a profession. Indeed, in my professional life I am quite stationary, literally never leaving my room for long stretches of time except to go to the bathroom or to eat, shop, or go to church. But while my professional life at this particular point is rather stationary, for fun I choose not only to leave my room, but to travel to airports, subject myself to the ridiculous rituals that are required for travel, and to leave my city, leave my country, travel on unfamiliar planes through sometimes crowded and uncomfortable flights to unfamiliar destinations filled with strangers I do not know and often will never see or interact with again, who little know or care that I may be recording some aspect of our interactions on my cell phone camera or in my travel writing. In many ways, this knowledge that I am a largely obscure and unknown traveler and writer, by no means an important person that few people would anticipate (or dread) meeting helps to make the anxiety less crippling, as there is comfort in moving in anonymity and obscurity in the larger world.

There are other ways, though, that one copes with the anxiety. The traveler often seeks comforting ritual, examining one’s travel documents to make sure that one has brought everything that one needs, making sure that one has properly packed to the best of one’s abilities, using checklists in the head to mark down what one plans to do, where one is going. One may seek a familiar source of caffeine for some last-minute energy–I usually do not, even on morning flights like this, at least until I have arrived safe and sound at an airport and gotten through security. Keeping one’s destination and the adventures one has in mind is a great way to turn the anxiety of undertaking travel into the energy one needs to traverse airports and handle oneself in long lines. It takes energy to travel, and if that energy is fueled by a hint of anxiety, or by a bit of caffeine, it is sometimes necessary that we draw the energy that we need from whatever sources are available to us as we undertake the quests of our existence.