At the end of this day, I will be on the road for exactly 10 months. It’s incredible.

I am glad I keep this blog. Plus my paper journal, that gets so much more information than would (or should) ever fit into this blog.

Plus I have all the pictures of my trip, organized by date.

To give you an idea, in 2014 alone I have taken roughly 30 000 pictures, representing 190 GigaBytes of data. I will need another year off to sort all that.

Without all this, I would have a hard time memorizing all that has happened… the first stops, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay… already seem so far away, a bit like in a haze.

I guess it is normal, as I am amassing many more memories than in my usual day-to-day work life in Brussels.

When I meet new people in a city and tell them what I am doing now, inevitably, the question Where have you been so far? pops up.

I have started to give the a short version of the itinerary: South America, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Istanbul, Tel Aviv, Montréal…

If I give them the full detailed account, city by city, I realize how eyes get bigger and bigger… and I realize how I myself start to have a dizzy feeling in my head.

The secret to keeping it down and manageable is to live in the moment, and to go along, step by step.

I have booked the big destinations, but I have given up most of the detailed planning until I am actually there… and by then it is mostly too late to plan other big side trips. And the budget won’t allow that, away.

But by traveling with a horizon of not more than maximum two months I keep my sanity.

As an über-planning German, it is a good lesson in letting things come my way and trust that they will all work out fine, things will fall into place, sort themselves, I will find a car, a hotel, a room.

To say it with Francois Mitterrand: Il faut laisser le temps au temps.

Inevitably though: I am more than halfway through my trip. Even with the two months extension into spring 2015, undeniably, I have more behind me than ahead.

I am not yet melancholic about it, as I say, I only think two months ahead, so my horizon is Mexico. Anything behind that is on a different planet.

Am I lonely? No. Actually, the few moments of loneliness were mostly in the start of this trip. The last months were too busy to actually feel alone. I had to force myself to sit at home and read or do nothing, and not be out and about all the time.

Do I miss friends? Yes, sometimes. It does get to you that most connections you might have are a maximum of four weeks old, and by then you leave and have to start anew.

So emails and connections with home are important. They do come in, maybe a bit less than in the start, as normal – and expected – people move on with their lives, they get used to me not being there. And communication dwindles. Still I feel it is overall a good level, on average. I would not ask for more.

Some friendships re-emerged and got renewed, others seem to fall asleep or wither away. It’s all fine. It is what it is.

The challenge is, and will always be, not to expect too much, not to expect anything, and just be grateful for what is given. There’s no point in being angry over that. I’m not saying I manage this well. Just that I try to.

As for the new friendships, as short as they may have been in practical terms in each city, I am making an effort in keeping in touch, and be it only with a message through Whatsapp once a month, or through Facebook. But I really want to try to keep the people of this trip in my life, to keep a connection alive. To meet them again. One day.

On top of this, Seattle has me in a very mellow mood. Smoking pot just became legal in the state of Washington. Not that I have tried it, but the fumes are so strong on some streets, just walking behind someone can make you high.

Maybe that explains my mood: totale Antriebsschwäche, as my sister Sabine would call it: the total lack of drive.