Oh, how I miss traveling! I’m more than happy to stay home right now for the safety of everyone, but I will be so excited to get out and explore again when it’s safe to do so. Travel has become a major part of my life during vacation time and for work. I’d now consider myself a fairly professional traveler with status on multiple airlines, a rental car company, and a hotel chain. When I’m not traveling, I like to research places to travel. I will spend hours on a weekend looking for great travel deals and researching new cities and countries to visit. It truly feeds my soul. I wouldn’t have it any other way. Through all the highs and lows of traveling so often, I’ve learned so much and become a better overall person. I’ve gained perspective, confidence, acceptance, and appreciation.
I made travel a priority in my life as soon as I could afford to do so, even a few times I couldn’t afford it. In addition to vacation travel, my work in event marketing started taking me all over the US to manage events. The first couple of months really pushed me out of my comfort zone, but I was so inspired by the job and an incredible boss that I admired that I just jumped in without thinking and figured everything out. There were so many times that I was intimidated and scared to travel on my own in the beginning. But there was a job to be done, so I had to just figure it out. I became a pro at booking flights, hotels, and navigating through cities in rental cars, public transportation, or rideshares. It gave me such confidence to know that no matter what happens, I can get through it, even if it is a freak snowstorm in Wichita and I have to drive to the airport in a Kia Soul to try and book a flight out two days later!
I learned resilience by having to deal with less than ideal situations more times than I can count- canceled flights, pushy people, no restaurants open, flight delays, 5am flights, awful weather, blisters, and crying babies, oh my! But through it all, the adventure was still worth the annoyance that I had to deal with. I love sociology and being out and in the world in large groups and in one on one situations, like talking to a rideshare driver or a hotel staff member, you will learn all about what motivates people. The biggest lesson you will learn, if you don’t know it already, is that a tiny bit of kindness will go a long way in getting you what you need. When you can laugh off the fact that your hotel room reeks of marijuana and you have checked in at 10pm and now have to call down and get someone to come check it and get you a new room, then you end up with 10,000 bonus points, a new room, and a funny story to tell instead of being cranky and upset all night at the hotel staff. When there are only a few standby seats on the flight that will get you home 4 hrs earlier, a few kind words instead of a pushy attitude will make sure the lovely attendant at the desk gets you that last seat and it’s even a window seat! Yes, I occasionally glare at the gentlemen listing to Worldstar Hip Hop videos on their phone at full volume while waiting for a delayed flight, but I just see it as another memory from my travels. Getting the full terrorist screen from TSA after returning home from Egypt was terrifying and awful to go through when fully dehydrated and dealing with a pounding headache and nausea after a long flight from London, but yet again, it makes a great story to share!
I’ve learned to take more risks on my travel adventures, and I fully blame two of my best friends for always embracing our motto of “it’s not a trip if you didn’t almost die at least once.” (Sorry Mom & Dad; glad you don’t read this.) From parasailing to climbing volcanos to canyoning to crossing busy roads to eating street food and hiking through jungles or driving down narrow roads on the side of a mountain, those are the moments that leave you feeling truly alive, mostly because you are so incredibly grateful to still be alive, but you get the point. When you do things that scare you or push you out of your comfort zone, then you learn to be less fearful of the world. You learn that you are far stronger than you ever knew. You gain the confidence to do things that are not easy because the result has always been worth the risk so far.
Culture is all around, from city to city in the US and especially when you travel internationally. You will learn so much by seeing how others live. You learn even more when you spend the time speaking with people in other countries and asking them what’s important to them. Getting out of the US, I always realize that we live in this bubble of complete abundance, yet so many people feel that they don’t have enough. Our hustle just to acquire more is not relatable to so many others. I’ll never forget showing pictures of my farm to people in Guatemala, and they asked why we would waste so much land with grass when we could be growing crops. To them, agriculture and using the land is everything. They were some of the poorest people I’ve ever met, yet they were also some of the happiest. I’m always asked why I don’t take more extended trips by Europeans. They can’t relate to only having a few weeks of vacation time in the US. Anything less than 5 weeks seemed uncivilized to a lady I met from Amsterdam. Getting out of your bubble will help you gain perspective of the culture you live in. It might also make you question what you put as a priority in your own life. It’s important to see that our own culture may only be comfortable because it’s the only one we’ve known. Gaining that perspective helped me choose to define what I view to be important in my own life versus what my local culture tells me to embrace.
I’ve seen the good, the bad, and oh so much ugly…..but I’ve also seen the incredible, the awe-inspiring, the ancient, and so much diversity. So as much as my travels may seem like I’m just trying to get away on a vacation, they are far more about soul searching and learning more about this wide, wonderful world we all live in. There’s so much to see, and I will never stop exploring as long as I can still move. I plan to start sharing a lot more travel stories, tips, and insights in a video series and blog. I’ll add a link once I get the site up and running! I’ll try to keep Blue Unicorns for life coaching and the quest for happiness but since travel brings me so much happiness they are bound to overlap from time to time! I hope you all are safe and dreaming about where you will travel to next!
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