Let's Catch Up

It's not that I haven't travelled since 2018, quite the contrary. But life looks very different and I think I wanted to save it all for myself. And if I'm being honest, often this is a bit like shouting into the void. And yet here I am, sitting in a bustling Airbus waiting to take off, in a sharing mood.

Since this time last year, my ever wandering feet having taken me to Portugal and Mexico but not alone and it is so different. Wonderful in its own ways but...different. So now it's been two years since I dipped out of society solo and the itch is real. My last solo was...epic. I fell even deeper in love with a city I already had a major flirtation with: Barcelona. I had been there briefly (and I mean briefly) in 2015 and longed to return for 6 long years until 2021 when we were, at last, reunited. Sparks flew. The architecture, the art, the food, the energy of the people, the fucking beach, it all drew me in. And as this trip created itself, I just...couldn't resist. But our 2023 love affair will be brief yet again, simply stopping to check in on the piece of my heart I buried at the top of Mt. Tibidabo. And then I'll be off to the next.

It never sets in until I land. It won't feel like it's really here. Seventy-five percent of my brain capacity is mentally planning a trip at any given moment so when I actually book one, it still feels like a dream until I see that passport stamp. I've already had a blast navigating the Montreal airport though and that's not sarcastic; that quick paced, energized buzz of figuring out where the hell to go in an airport you've never been in, in a language you don't speak. I live for that shit. When people hear I almost exclusively travel alone, they think I'm fearless. That I have no anxiety about wildly fucking something up, that it never crosses my mind that I could get completely lost or find myself in a bind. Or that it doesn't phase me to be doing it all alone. Let's clear that up.

I will admit, the alone part is the easiest for me at this point. I'm personally a big fan of me and really enjoy spending time with myself. I won't proclaim I was always that way, especially about traveling. But when everyone you know goes off to college and you want to travel for three months through Europe, you don't wait around. As I see it, I had no choice but to learn this skill. I guess I'm a "forged in fire" kind of person.

As far as the jitters, trust me I get anxious. I can be an anxious person if I let my mind become the master rather than the servant, if we're bringing Alan Watts into this. And if you know me personally, you know that I consume, at high volume, many different types of true crime podcasts (really, it worries my husband). I have no fairy dust obscuring my world view. I've heard all the stories. But good lord, it is also not such a scary place once you really step into it. And that anxiety, that nervousness, of completely throwing myself into a wildly uncomfortable situation, with no one to lean on for back up, that is why I do this. I don't travel alone because I am void of fear. I travel alone because I think it is the most exciting way to confront fear. I yearn for expansion. I always have. So: if I'm going to stare discomfort in the face in search of that growth one way or another, why not do it naked on a Mediterranean beach?

Taking off,

Sarah