Last night I watched the MTV edition of Brook Silva-Braga’s documentary, A Map For Saturday. Brook was a TV producer for HBO who decided to quit his job, pack his bags and take off on a year-long journey around the world. The title of the doc comes from his theory that long-term travelers live in a world of eternal Saturdays. They didn’t work yesterday. They don’t have to work tomorrow. They just live.

I’ve been thinking about travel a lot lately. It’s like a great love that I haven’t seen a long time, since 2004 in fact. 2004 was the year that I graduated college. It was the year before I was forced to get a real job. I took advantage of it.

I went on a cruise to Grand Cayman, Cozumel and Key West in March. I did “Beach Week” in North Myrtle. I spent a week in the Riviera Maya in Mexico. I took a road trip to Boston and flew out to Vegas for a long weekend. I rounded out the year visiting a college friend in Paris and taking a bus through Brussels to Amsterdam.

Then, in January of 2005 I got a real job and my traveling came to a screeching halt. In the last three years I’ve been to Los Angeles three times (twice for work), Puerto Rico (for the second time) and the Bahamas (for the third time). I missed out on a trip to Bermuda and not one but TWO trips to India. Vacations are great, don’t get me wrong, but I haven’t gone anywhere new. I haven’t gotten to absorb any foreign languages or cultures. I’m not sure if I’ll ever have the guts to just pick up and leave like Brook but the road is calling and his documentary was definitely inspiring.