If you’ve been following along with me for a while or this is your first time here (welcome!), you may be asking yourself, “where the heck has she been?” Well, I’ve taken a bit of a break. I did not anticipate a pandemic to hit in 2020, as most of you can probably relate to, and it really forced me to take a step back from my life, both literally and figuratively. For the last decade I’ve been a full time wife, employee, blogger, traveler and all of the other things that come along with just being a human being. While Covid has been tough in so many ways, with too many cancelled plans, distancing from loved ones and general shittiness, it made me realize that I’m exhausted. Now, this is not a poor me, boo-hoo kind of exhausted, it just means I felt empowered to take a little break while being forced to stay put. I realized that I had not been at home for more than a few weeks at a time in nearly ten years and I truly had no plans of that changing anytime soon. Now, it’s been seven months since I’ve boarded an airplane and I have no clue when my next trip will be, which is kind of crazy when you think about it… I am a travel blogger after all.
In this time, I’ve found some interesting things about myself:
I love to garden. I’m not necessarily very good at it, but I’m learning to love the process each day. We were never home enough to keep things alive before, but now I have ten raised beds filled with growing vegetables and fruits and I’m afraid to leave them for even a day out of fear they will all wither away and die. I’ve bought a ridiculous amount of seed packets, which are all inventoried in a spreadsheet in case you were wondering, and I made a digital diagram of my garden space so I can plan out where to plant it all. I’ve found some very Type-A approved sites I follow that have taken me from plant killer to plant lady, so if you’re interested let me know! A few of my favorites are MIGardener (the absolute best garden videos and also where I buy all my seeds and gardening supplies from, as well as Epic Gardening (a local guy with really epic tips, especially for those with smaller, urban gardens).
Social media weighs on me. I’ve never been someone who needed to be Instafamous or wanted to Tweet about each bite of food I took throughout the day, I just wanted to put out quality content to help out like minded travelers. But, it all still weighed on me. Should I be posting more? Are my photos good enough? Why does that blogger have more followers? Does anyone even read this? I was spending too much energy comparing and criticizing instead of just doing what I loved, and what you loved, which was writing about my travels. This isn’t my full time job, even though that would be nice, so I have learned that I need to give myself grace and do typeAtrips because I’m passionate about it and not because it will equate to more Facebook followers.
I love my home and those I share it with. There were times I thought I might combust if I wasn’t traveling or planning my next vacation. I just needed to go somewhere, do something, as often as possible. Despite having a new house, I wasn’t really around enough to make it a home and Covid forced me to do just that. And gosh do I love it here. Don’t get me wrong, I ache for strolling the streets of Florence or savoring the Portland food scene, but I’ve learned to enjoy the comfort and warmth of having this little bit of earth that’s all my own, surrounded by the people I love most - there’s nowhere I could ever go that will bring me that kind of peace.
Not to worry, I’ll be back. But for now, I hope you’ll forgive me while I take some time for myself. I’ll always answer your questions so never hesitate to reach out via email or social media, I truly love hearing from you. Until then, please stay safe, wear a mask just in case and treat each other with kindness, forgiveness and grace so that we may come out of this closer together rather than farther apart.
