On life, and what matters in it.

Today marks a somber and regrettable moment in my life. The storage unit that has for the last half-decade house the various collected belongings culled from 25 years of life on this Earth, has lacked payment for the last time, and will soon be auctioned off to some dispassionate junk collector who will, in all likelihood, throw out the vast majority of it.

Old books, old computers, countless games, a complete collection of the writings of my early school-age years, and plenty of just plain old junk. The first computer I ever owned sits there, the first thing I ever wrote that was worth half a damn sits there, and a whole host of other nostalgic things, are all now but a short breadth of time away from finding their way into the hands of someone who will rummage through it, salvage what might serve as decent eBay or junk store fodder, and likely toss the rest into the nearest landfill.

But, strange as it may sound, there's an odd sort of liberated feel to the realization that almost everything you had gathered in life will soon be gone. In many ways, for good or ill, that storage unit has served as an anchor about my heels from the moment I acquired it. Very often miles away even when I still lived in the city that housed it, I still held on to it all, always with the apparently vain hope of finally getting a place of my own one day where I could get all of it back out again once and for all. It was a symbol of a hope for a better life, with a nice house and the money to afford it. I dreamed of a place with a nice big room where I could finally set up my own personal antique computer museum, and a dedicated gaming room, and all sorts of fancies of that nature.

Yet as I reflect upon that dream, I wonder if perhaps I've been looking at it the wrong way. I think of a world out there that I have largely never experienced, living my relatively sheltered life in the Pacific Northwest's least interesting cities. Places I have loved in spite of themselves, but still nonetheless lacking the vibrancy and culture of so many places in the world.

I watch Anthony Bourdain and Andrew Zimmern wander the world, experiencing exotic foods, while I can only look on in rapt jealousy, and I suddenly understand the term the food blogging community seems to have latched on to: food porn. It is inherently voyeuristic, gazing on at things we wish we had, a pale if occasionally satisfying substitute for the real thing.

But surely, like one might say about the more traditional variety of fleshy cinema, the real thing is so much better than simply watching it. It must be experienced, tasted.

And this is where I start thinking that I've had it all wrong. I may fancy the sedentary life quite often, but at the same time, I'm bloody miserable living like this, making do with my culinary experimentations with what I can manage to learn from recipes pulled from the internet. One of my greatest thrills in life is finding something new, whether it's a place or a food or a game or just the right group of new friends.

And here I've had, by twist of fate and my own bungled life management skills, removed the only physical anchor that still tied me down to a more stationary lifestyle. Could I not, now, with so few possessions to my name, be free to travel the world, experiencing all those things I have until now only dreamed about and drooled over on the television screen?

Certainly it would be a far more fascinating way of learning the arcane art of cuisine. Like the adventuring wizards of so many fantasy stories and role playing games, I could be searching the world not for new spells, but new foods and tastes and techniques. I've never been one for classroom learning, and I'm not likely to ever be able to afford the kind of tuition a top culinary school offers.

So this seed of an idea has formed, of becoming the wandering cook. Start here in my own backyard, save up enough cash for a passport and a ticket to who knows where, and start looking for a job opening in some restaurant where ever in the world it might be available. Work long enough in each place to save up for a ticket to the next, and work my way around the world, and just keep going, recording the sights and sounds and tastes of each new place, before moving on to the next.

That's the theory anyway. The practicalities, as is often the case in these sorts of fancies, remain to be seen. Can a person even live like that anymore? So many countries seem to have such exacting standards as to who they will allow to stay and work in a country, so many other countries might simply not present the opportunity for a foreigner like me to simply walk into the kitchen and start working. Most countries aren't exactly jumping at the chance to import more cooks, it's not even considered a "professional" field in the parlance of many immigration authorities. What about language and cultural barriers? Can I even manage to fund this kind of lifestyle on the salary of an ordinary cook? What if I find myself trapped in a place where I simply can't afford a ticket on to the next place?

Or, how much of this sudden onrush of questions is simply the scared, coddled little mama's boy in me trying to come up with excuses to continue with the same dead-end life I've lived for so long now? After all, this is an adventure we're talking about, the kind of thing that certainly requires some thought, but also relies intrinsically on some level of sheer impulsiveness.

The opportunity here to learn about the many foods across the world is just too tempting. There's so many places in the world I want to go simply for the food, and likely so many other places that I'd never even think about for food, that could have a host of surprises in store.

There's a feeling I get sometimes, with food, where I just sit and think of all the things out there that I just haven't tried yet, and it drives me absolutely batty that I haven't tried hardly any of them, and I want to try them all. I can easily see making a life's work out of doing nothing but going out, and doing my best to reach that unattainable goal.

Step one of course, is to go down to the local saloon, whom I've just learned is hiring, and do my best to talk my way into the kitchen. As with so many journeys, this one really starts at home, and in the preparations that will have to made for this adventure to truly begin, and I truly hope that this most recent dream, unlike so many in the past, I can will into reality.

And maybe get a nice fat book deal out of it.