Life isn't about where you end up.

No more than eighty pages long, about a hand's length and thin enough to grasp between my thumb and index finger, there lay a black book. Labelled "Dream Notebook," this notebook once belonged to my mother, who I'd borrowed it from for some time. That is to say, it was handed down to me about 15 years ago, when I was 10. I was finally cleaning my room - like any typical mid 20's live-in child, my stagnant life had made me grow complacent with the state of my living area. Unfortunately, this clutter was rooted in a deeper issue, however.

Rattling twice, the nurse shook the pill bottle, then opened it, taking out two of the pills, the dose for the afternoon, and placed them before my mother as she lay on the hospital bed, with her arms slowly lifting upwards to meet the tablets, which she then swallowed. With just a gulp, roughly $500 USD in exclusive, rare medication was absorbed into her bloodstream, showing symptoms of working only under the veil of truth that the pills were taken for an inevitably incurable disease. While the illness shall not be named, unlike even most sinister ailments, this particular one came with an all but certail death knell.

After waving goodbye to my mother, and her caretaker, I went back home to what used to be our two bedroom apartment for the two of us, where we began living after my father abandoned us two decades ago. It's not that my time together with him was bad, but since those memories only go up until age 5, they are near irrelevant to my daily life. As I lay back down on my bed, I check my emails on a slightly outdated smartphone - email #1 comes from the medical center - estimated remaining time on this earth - as I call it - was around 80 days - or under 3 months, for the parent who had raised me and lived together in this apartment with me for the past 20 years.

That reminds me - when I was little, my mother once used to lull me to sleep reading a bedtime story - something about traveling around the entire globe in 80 days. "Wow," I thought to myself. I wondered just how much money such a trip would cost. Not that it would be possible anytime in my life. Already, we were on verge of losing the apartment, and due to the debt of 5 thousand and counting that was putting my bank account in the red - the price of medical care for the past year - which included the $30,000 in life savings my mother spent already meant the total bill was now 35 thousand and we were 5 thousand in the red. *At this rate, my credit score won't hold up much longer,* I thought to myself. But all my cluttered thoughts were still nothing compared to the clutter of my room.

I don't remember exactly when it started, but that night I began to clean my room. Eventually under a pile of now cleared rubble, came a nostalgic item - a small black notebook. I think it must have been at least a decade since I'd last seem the thing. On what felt like an unstoppable motion - a roll of sorts, my snowball effect of a trip down memory lane continued, as I finally decided to open the book, turning page by page. The second half was still mostly empty, the first half had already been filled by various notes made by mother, and when I got to the last couple pages, hidden on the back of the second to last page in my handwriting, was a very, very strange thing - a series of letters and numbers - what seemed to be effectively gibberish. Intrigued, I tried to think back to what I was doing ten years ago, or before that perhaps.

When I was around 14 to 15, I loved browsing the net on the now junk desktop computer I used to have. I dove through page after page all night. I realized that, my email account having remained the same since then, it may give me some more clues as to the meaning of the gibberish in the notebook. I scrolled, and scrolled.

And I scrolled some more; about three thousand emails later, I amazingly found a few of my oldest emails dated to maybe 10-11 years ago or so. Well, to dive in, I thought - and so clicking on them one by one, eventually I stumbled upon what I was looking for. The email said the following:

"User ID for blockchain: your email address

Password is given as listed here:"...

And there it was. Like a flash of inspiration, the gibberish beneath that finally triggered my memory. On night, I read about some strange new invention called "bitcoin." It was these coins online that acted like money - or whatever. Interested, I remember spending like 50 cents on it, for whatever reason. I think that's all I had in my bank account back then...anyways, I think they were worth around a dollar for one "coin" when I bought them. Well, dang. Probably totally worthless now, I thought to myself.

Not like it really mattered really; it was only 50 cents. Out of curiosity, I decided to go to the site and enter my login anyways.

-

SELL. I pressed the sell button. Over 10 years later, I sat in my bed, still in shock. I had just sold roughly 1/2 of what I now knew was a "cryptocurrency" called bitcoin, or BTC for short. I immediately paid off all $5000 in debt that I had outstanding, and then - stared at my bank statement.

$20,000, twenty thousand dollars - the 5 numeral digits said, lined up on my phone screen. Hmm, I thought to myself. Closing out the bank app I'd used to sell this so-called "virtual currency" off - I took off straight for the hospital. It was now 7am, and the sun was rising.

As I sat down next to my mother, who was technically still full of energy physically - at least for now - I asked her a question. "I read the little black book. Is what you wrote there still true in your heart today?"

"Yes," she replied - almost immediately to my surprise. After selling my "BTC," I poured open the pages of the first half of the black book, as I was in a bit of a trace state. One page in particular was what stood above all else. Dated 15 years back, it said the following:

"One day, when my child is an adult - I want to go on an adventure together - like in that story - I want us to round the world in 80 days."

Next, I said to her:

"Are you sure this is what you want?"

And she nodded yes, quietly. I showed her my phone screen and as her eyes met those "5 digits," I uttered to her just these words:

"Let's go."

-

I stand here today, in my spotless, clean bedroom, about to head off to my new job as a travel assistant - not the best pay, but it supports the cost of the apartment's rent and living for one.

The other day, after reading this journal, which is being penned in the second half of the so called "Dream Notebook," at the grave of my mother, I recall the forever unforgettable some 80 odd days we spent together, and those final moments that I would so deeply cherish forever inside of me.

This will be the final entry in this book, but I will never forget the strange whirlwind of a trip that it set me out on. And I will never forget any one single word of what me and my precious parent had penned together on the final day of our trip:

"Life isn't about where you end up. It's the journey."

~THE END~