10 days to go

Only 10 days left. I'm totally out of the schedule; hopefully I can take my work with me. I have a whole year to catch up, isn't it? 
I've been using these last days to grow, intensively, striving to touch the bottom. Perhaps I've managed, I will have all the crying done by next Thursday, when I fly to Paris. 
I've been closing all my old life. It's hard to believe, it's a quarter of a century that I'm closing. The years of Portugal, the years of studying, the years of squeezing in a context. It's a pity I don't feel euphoric about going to France. It is a cute perspective indeed, but what I feel inside is a great burden, a work to do, all the growing. 
I miss speaking Dutch, and I miss feeling like a scholar, kind of big person. I miss feeling my intellectual strength. My brain has been thoroughly emptied these last two or three weeks, till the very slime on the bottom. I know all the importance of it, of this quasi-religious poverty. Different than last year when I landed in Lisbon.
Nonetheless, I'm thinking about travels again; that's a sign of my improving psychological state. I didn't even upload the photos after I came back from Sicily and Malta. And now, I'm back to planning. I will have Ljubljana and Jena very soon. And then from France, quite a different set of destinations must be available, I imagine. Perhaps some places in sub-Saharan Africa, like Benin or whatever. But also France in itself is worth having. I've been thinking about Christmas, will I come back to my apartment or what? Africa's tempting me.