This morning I awoke without an inkling that it would be fateful. It started completely normally, with coffee and a walk. A bit of reading: I finished the book I’d started a couple of weeks ago, The Alchemist by Paul Coelho. It was the suggestion of a friend who gave me some painfully-true advice. It’s a charming fable about following your dream, and how the universe will conspire to help you.

With this bouncing around inside I began to search out my new bed. The old hostel’s checkout date had come and I find it’s always hard to relax without knowing where you’ll call home. And though I liked it and it was cheap, Chiang Mai has so many places to stay it’s a shame not to sample a few.

As I walked I considered my own dream. Some people seem to have what they want always clearly in mind. Not me. What I have is a hazy notion, but it’s becoming more distinct. I want to travel.

“Dude, you are traveling!” It’s true, I am. But there’s a time limit. My immigration status in the U.S. will make any stay past 6 months very messy: my green card would be forfeit and I’d no longer be resident in the country where most of my friends, my home, car, all my possessions, and all my assets reside. It’s constrained. It’s not the free travel of which I dream.

Because of the constraints I’ve begun to see this trip as John the Baptist and not the true Messiah. The precursor and harbinger, but not the thing itself.

Thus my task when I get home is to cut these constraints: deal with the immigration situation, file taxes, sell off more of my goods down to the minimum, mothball my life and prepare for truly unbounded travel.

The other tasks are plain, but ‘deal with the immigration situation’ has two options. Sell my stuff, move back to Canada and begin from there or go all the way to US Naturalization and become a citizen.

Truly it’s not much of a choice. After living my adult life in the US I don’t really consider myself Canadian any more. I’ve known for a long time I was going choose to stay in the US but I’ve not done anything about it. That is where my home and my identify lie. There was no real need to do anything when I worked a normal job and had a normal life. But it’s becoming clear that’s no longer the life I want to live.

So today, after securing my bed for the night, with fables of acting on one’s dream in my head, I went online and looked up the details of the process. One fact stood out immediately: the turnaround time is 6 months for naturalization applications. If I were to start in March, my planned return, it would be September before I knew the verdict, before I could be on the road again. Spending that much time in the states would evaporate my cushion of money. Also, not filing for naturalization very soon means my green card, which expires in June, needs a very costly renewal. Everything pointed to this day being the day to act.

So I started right then and there in the hostel common room.

It’s been a long time since I experienced a state of flow. That state of concentration where work just melts in front of you and you never get stuck, or bored, or fidgety. You never pop over to that other browser tab to see what fun things are going on there. But something about this task and its connection to my ever-growing dream put the wind in my sails. Normally tedious paperwork was easy and painless. All the frustrating obstacles: endlessly re-reading detailed-but-critical questions and instructions, how to print the documents, how to get the required passport photos, how to list out all the trips I’ve made in the last 5 years, all the addresses where I’ve lived, where to find the courier service to send it off — all these which would have had me dragging my feet back home for days or weeks were a breeze today.

A breeze, despite them being much more difficult being for done in a foreign country without all my documents and familiar shops and services.

Pieces kept falling into place: on my way to the new hostel — which provided the needed printing, scanning and photocopying at ฿5 per page — I saw a UPS store. M was around to proofread and generously agreed to forward on the documents to the Department of Homeland Security after turning my wire transfer into an acceptable check or money order. Working steadily through the afternoon, I arrived at the UPS store 15 minutes before the cutoff with a freshly printed N-400 “Application for Naturalization” document and associated addenda. With 3 day delivery it gets to Seattle by the end of the year.

Even though every step was prescribed, in great detail, by the lawyers of the US government, it felt like freedom. Like swimming with the tide, every stroke amplified. The very water that surrounded me urging my progress.

I awoke this morning with no idea this would be a fateful day, no idea where I’d call home that night. I go to bed having committed to make my adopted country my home.

It’s not lost on my that there’s an inconsistency — some might say an unseemly one — about taking citizenship in a country prompted by the idea of spending more time outside of it.

To that, I can only make this reply. The application ends by asking if you’re willing to take the oath of allegiance. Do you support the Constitutions and the government, and how far would your actions go in light of that support? Regardless of its obsessively well-publicized problems, I do support the USA. And while it’s easy to focus on the problems, that constitution articulates some truly beautiful principles. And fundamental to those principles is the right of everyone the liberty to pursue their happiness.

Ultimately this all — the citizenship, the travel — isn’t about where you sleep every night but what you believe and what actions take to realize those beliefs. And I believe in freedom. And I believe it is time for me to pursue mine.