Timeline

Five years ago today I was in a dorm room in Montana, pining for a long-distance girlfriend and clueless about the direction of my life. I'd put very close to absolutely no effort into school and had a poor relationship with my family. After four months, I packed my belongings and a Dutch rabbit named Oscar and fled back to Illinois in my cousin's Chevy Lumina.

Four years ago today I was living with my parents and attending community college, arguing with a long-distance girlfriend and no wiser as to my future. I worked at a hotel and played a lot of video games. On a whim after the new year, I'd move to Florida to work and live on a state park.

Three years ago today I was back with my parents, moping over a drawn-out break up, back at community college, wondering about another try at a university. The Florida job had deteriorated from web-surfing and infrequent menial tasks to mindless data entry sandwiched between ruthless redneck office gossip. I would quit in August, too demoralized to fight for my final paycheck.

Two years ago today I was living in a cookie-cutter townhouse on an Illinois university campus with Mike and Steve, bowlers with mild attitudes. I was in my second semester of an English degree, working at Subway and the school paper. Beyond graduating, I had no goals.

One year ago today I was living in Santiago with a sweet Chilean family, learning Spanish and eating too much. I was within sight of my bachelor's, making friends with people from around the country and the world and drinking lots of cheap beer. In a month I'd have seen Argentina and Machu Picchu in Peru. By the end of the year I'd see the Straits of Magellan in Patagonia.

Tonight, I'm sitting up in bed listening to Korean motorists putter down the street. There's 11,000 won in my wallet ($8.87) and I'm still uncertain if my ATM card works here. In twelve hours I'll go to a school to teach children how to read, write, speak and understand English with no more than a few classes on 17th century lit and a ramshackle lesson plan. When it's bad it's tiresome, and when it's good it's indescribable.

A year from today I'll be gone. I've got a good mind to ride the trans-Siberian railway and hitchhike West through Europe. After that, if the money isn't gone, maybe a motorcycle tour of the continental 48. Nothing's set in stone.

In 2006, I was riding in a golf cart with a silicon-valley ground-floor millionaire. We were cleaning up after a garden party at his Key Largo home.

"If you could do anything, what would you do? What do you want to be?" he asked.

"Indiana Jones," I said. I wonder what he would have said if I'd thought to ask him the same question.