Preparation Progress

A dark brown table covered in books,stacks of papErs,index cards, and notebooks

planning note 02 · 14 October 2026

Well, here we are again, with less than 2 weeks before my departure. I haven’t written much in the past few weeks, possibly because there hasn’t seemed like much to write about, or I’ve just been too busy “doing” the things to have the capacity to then write about them as well.

And it has been…a lot. Multiple route changes which then meant updating 8 documents and spreadsheets plus the website in several locations. Airbnb changes. Issues obtaining documents. Finding a language school for January. Finding and booking transportation and housing for January – March. Booking and completing my CPR, First Aid, and Rescue Diver course work for my class in Cozumel (not a bad way to spend Thanksgiving). Confirming appointments. Consulting accountants from two different countries. Taking Spanish classes. Reading and listening to Podcasts on Mexican history. Packing. Visiting family. Unpacking. Re-packing. Researching scuba gear. Booking dives. Tracking expenses. Making sure I’m keeping expenses as low as possible. Getting sucked into stupid Facebook Land. Voting.

That’s a lotta stuff requiring some major executive functioning, which I often find both lacking and exhausting to try and force. It’s no wonder I haven’t had the capacity to write.

There are patterns in how I function. Cycles. I notice it more now that I understand myself a bit better and have language to explain years of confusion. Major output periods. Chaos that eventually forms into some sort of order. Collapse. Vegetate. Recover. Repeat. I’m learning to accept and lean into it.

This, btw, is where I find Claude has come in handy as a thinking partner and an accessibility tool for someone like me. Often all the pieces are there in my head, all at once, but parsing it out so I can translate it into an external plan of action that can hold all the seemingly disparate pieces isn’t always available to me. AI helps as both direct scaffolding and a tool that can help me create other scaffolding and tools. When I make route change, the change is made across multiple documents and the blog. I can track my ideas and argue with myself, which allows me to refine my plans better. And Claude built me a custom flash card study deck because my paper note-card stack was getting too thick to travel with me.

I am sure I am driving everyone in my life nuts now that Mexico has become a special interest – listening to Audiobooks about Mexican history on double speed, showing them my spreadsheets, dropping little “You know, in Mexico…” tidbits, trying to translate and practice my Spanish with them (despite none of them actually speaking any Spanish…). I try to keep it low key, but well…I’m excitedJ And scared. And overwhelmed. And chomping at the bit.