I am one step closer to traveling the world.

My passport came in the mail last week. My first passport, that is. And the picture’s not even that bad.

I have never left the country. In the past year, I’ve barely left the state. Actually, I think I left the state about three or four times in 2007—a few times when I went shopping in New Hampshire, and one time when I was helping Christina look for an apartment and she took a wrong turn and ended up in Rhode Island. And I live in Massachusetts, so leaving the state is not a big deal.

And I’ve only been on a plane three times—Florida twice and California once. In March I’m going to San Francisco on business, and even if I won’t have much free time to do anything work-related, I’m still really excited about it because a.) my company is paying to send me to a city I wouldn’t have the money to go to on my own and b.) even if I never see the outside of the hotel, I’m still traveling on a plane and staying in a hotel—and those, for me, are events.

I volunteer at a homeless shelter, and one day my fellow volunteers started talking about places they’d traveled, how nice Spain is, blah blah blah. Then one of them looked at me and said, “What about you? Do you travel a lot?” Me: “Um…I’m hoping to get my first passport soon.”

Seriously, though. Is it just because I work in the extremely low-paying publishing industry that I can’t fathom spending money on a trip? These people aren’t that much older than me. Maybe they have better-paying jobs, because I honestly can’t imagine being able to afford plane tickets to a foreign country while still being able to pay the rent.

So while the small obstacle of money is still there…at least I know that theoretically, if a gorgeous rich guy falls madly in love with me and wants to whisk me off to Europe in his private jet (hey, it happened to Monica on Friends), I won’t ruin the moment by saying, “But I don’t have a passport!”