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I am not, by nature, a traveller. I’ve always liked the IDEA of travelling, but the actual doing of it has managed to elude me. I am also not, by nature, spontaneous. On the occasions I leave my little Canadian town, it’s with a fair amount of planning and even more advance notice. So I must have been incredibly bored at work to be searching out travel destinations, but somehow I found myself surfing for things to do in New York City. I flipped through the list of Broadway plays and sight-seeing tours and stumbled onto an advertisement for a Book Convention. I’m a big reader, so I was intrigued. I was amazed to see how many authors I loved were going to be attendance. Yes, I decided, going through the list of panels and workshops, this was it. THIS was going to be my first foray into real travelling. I was going to Book Con! Nothing but nothing was going to stop me! Then I saw the date. TOMORROW. I stared at it for a bit and felt my heart break a little. I closed the website. There was no way I was getting to New York by tomorrow. Trips like that took way more planning. I’d just have to go next year. On a whim, I opened the browser back up and checked how much plane tickets would cost. I could afford that. On a slightly larger whim, I googled what flights would get me there in time for the convention and back for work on Monday. I could make those flights. Every stroke of the keyboard had me feeling a little bit bolder, had my heart beating a little bit faster. This was something I could actually DO. All I had to do was just... DO it. When the clock ticked 4:30, I raced out of the office into my mother’s car. Announcing we were going to CAA to book plane tickets for that night may have been the most bewildering thing my mother has ever heard me say, but soon she was caught up in the adventure. I booked plane tickets, convention tickets, and a hotel in half an hour. I had my bag packed in even less time. I grabbed a couple hours of sleep and then the next thing I knew I was taxing to the airport for my first plane ride in over a decade. It was only as I got off the plane in New York City that I realized I was in another country, alone, with virtually no plan beyond “Go See Authors Talk About Books”. Suddenly, I was scared and anxious. I stumbled into a cab and and meekly asked to be taken to the convention location. The minute I walked into that convention, all fear washed away. I knew just looking around the lobby that I was in the right place — the place I had been looking for all my life. There were giants banners advertising new publications. There were girls dressed in librarian chic carrying around stacks of novels. A young man was handing out flyers listing what times different authors would be on the main stage. The entire building had the delicious, pulse-quickening smell of BOOKS. I was where I was meant to be. I was HOME. I just had to actually leave home to find it.