don't you have an elsewhere to be?

First things first: I'm using a quote from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" as a title for this blog post. Go ahead, judge me. It's good enough that I'll repeat it:

Don't you have an elsewhere to be?

That's the message San Francisco's Tara Russell is sending out, far and wide. Russell, a certified life coach who runs Three Month Visa Coaching and Consulting , specializes in career breaks and life sabbaticals. Simply put, she gets armchair travelers off the couch and on the plane. Says Russell, "You know the Jet Blue guy who pulled the hatch to escape his job? Well, he wouldn't have had to do that if he'd talked to me first."

In January of 2008, Russell also launched the San Francisco Travel Book Club and Lectures Series, which she holds monthly at Books, Inc. on Chestnut Street. (Books Inc., "The West's Oldest
Independent Bookseller," is a locally owned and operated bookseller with 10 locations in California whose origin dates back to the Gold Rush Days of 1851 when Anton Roman struck it rich in Shasta City, California and set himself up in business selling books.) Since the inception of the Lecture Series, Russell has brought in an impressive list of travel writers and authors, including Rolf Potts (author of Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-term World Travel), Franz Wisner (author of Honeymoon with My Brother), Stephanie Elizondo Griest (author of Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing and Havana), and Greg Sullivan, founder of AFAR magazine. (And me. I had the pleasure of speaking for the lecture series in 2009 when Writing Away: A Creative Guide to Awakening the Journal-Writing Traveler came out.)

Next month, Russell is teaming up with the travel divas from Briefcase to Backpack as they launch "MEET, PLAN, GO", an exciting nationwide movement to raise awareness about career breaks and extended travel, in 13 cities across the United States and Canada. I've been invited to attend the San Francisco event on September 14th as a "travel ambassador." The evening promises that you will "MEET inspirational speakers and like-minded travelers in your area, get motivation, contacts and resources necessary to PLAN the trip of a lifetime, start taking concrete steps forward, and get ready to GO!" Expect lively panel discussions with travel experts, travel prize giveaways, and enough inspiration on tap to motivate everyone attending to pack their bags and find their "elsewhere."