One of the great fantasy lifestyles of the last decade is that of the digital nomad. Right up there with the social media influencer, I think it’s going to prove to be more of a trend than an enduring occupation. Why? It’s challenging to do, that’s why.
For the past few years, I’ve taken to carrying a small Moleskine or similar bound notebook on trips. My goal has always been to keep a running journal, so I don’t have to lug a laptop around with me all day. It’s much easier to slip into a pocket and pull out, even when there’s only time for a paragraph at a time. The trouble with this system is that I have never successfully recorded an entire trip. I’ve tried, oh, I’ve tried. The same part of my identity that bought a locking diary at age nine feels this really strong urge to record everything for posterity, or at least my own personal dotage. As I get further and further behind in my chronicles, I start feeling more of a sense of urgency. I promise myself that I will “catch up” at the airport, on the plane on the way home, or, worst case scenario, in my own living room. It never happens. Sorry, Future Old Me! The other problem is trying to keep a blog up to date. In the past, I’ve written material weeks ahead of time and scheduled it to auto-post. Then I’ve posted about the trip from the comforts of home, with time to compile recollections and notes from my travel companions. Doing this from the road tends to interfere with the trip itself. You find yourself writing about writing, and then journaling about writing about writing. It’s a textual exercise in navel gazing. The point of travel is to see the world. How can someone do this while simultaneously writing about it, making a meta-trip of the trip? More and more time needs to be allotted to the record-keeping. If you’re into the Quantified Self movement, then you would also be recording your food log, hydration, exercise, hours slept, etc. If you’re a birdwatcher like me, then you’re also tallying sightings for your life list. That’s where the other voice pipes up, the voice that cries CARPE DIEM! and YOLO! (My inner voice is too old for that latter; I keep reading it as You Obviously Like Owls). Stop photographing everything, especially your lunch! Stop trying to fit your online persona’s parallel life onto social media while you yourself are walking in the steps of Today You! It’s a tightrope walk, a precarious balancing act between the living of the adventure and the artistic representation thereof. My fantasy has been to do this full time. How great it would be to be completely location independent and write while on the road! Let’s just drop everything and travel from place to place as the whim takes us. In the background, the big wet pleading eyes of our dog Spike and the benignant golden gaze of my little gray parrot Noelle stare us down. What then will become of us, they cry poignantly. Never love an animal, it will mess you up like nothing else. There should be hostels in the major cities of the world centered around animal rescues, where lonely animal-loving nomads can drop by for snuggle exchange. That’s what we’ll call it! Snuggle Exchange! There can even be cats that bat people in the face in the middle of the night, yowling for their 5 AM feeding while sleepy tourists respond “All right, all right already!” Sounds perfect. The real problem, and I’ve read this in the blogs of other nomads, is that seeing the world interferes with getting any kind of work done. A huge amount of time can be spent on the simple transactional aspects of travel, while normal chores like banking and grocery shopping and laundry still need to be done. You’re forever checking in and out of hotels, waiting at bus stops, packing and repacking luggage. It’s a huge part of the fun and the feeling that a real adventure is being had, but it’s also a recurring pain in the neck, sometimes literally. A flat pillow has been the cause of so many disappointing days and so many stupid quarrels, probably for several millennia. Didn’t Marcus Aurelius write about flat pillows? (Not looking that one up because I specifically remember him telling himself off about the desire for a warm soft bed). The other thing that goes well with pillows is the act of reading. On this trip as with all others, I have counseled Future Me that there won’t be as much time to read as usual, and to plan around at least a 50% reduction. Really it’s more like 90%. The time that Imaginary Me is supposedly reading a novel is also the time that Aspirational Me is supposedly writing in the little black journal, and in reality Today Me is trying to identify a flock of what will turn out to be jackdaws. There’s always a tradeoff, isn’t there? Why can’t I be Default Me and Aspirational Me at the same time? Why can’t there simply be three of me, one to do the great things, one to do the secret cute habits, and the third to write about it all and make it sound like the stuff of legend? We’re sort of pulling it off today. We walked in the woods, ate in a cafe, ventured into the countryside, saw some new birds, visited two castles, learned about history, tried new foods, bought a bag of custard donuts, read a few news articles, and now my mate is cooking dinner while I’m “working.” {tee hee, she went} It could be done, it could be done. It could be done with a smooth enough road and enough bus travel, enough convenience foods and a patient enough helpmeet. If nothing else, writing about it might convince others that living on the road isn’t always very adventurous, and the comforts of home are well worth appreciating. For a minimalist, I sure have a lot of luggage. That’s because I travel a lot, and what is ideal for one trip is a poor choice for a different trip. I’ve tended to think of my suitcase as the city bag, and my backpack as the camping bag. On our most recent trip, my husband convinced me that we should bring backpacks instead of suitcases, and it turns out he was right.
Suitcases are probably the root cause of many travel problems. See, a backpack is a constant reminder that you will be carrying the weight of everything you put in it. Unlike a suitcase, it’s shaped around your body. You can’t not think about your back and shoulders. A suitcase can be sat on. Cramming in more stuff seems like it might be a good idea, because you can sit on it when it’s too full to pull the zipper closed. Most people probably only own one suitcase, or share a set among a family. That means they’re always bringing the same size of bag for every trip, no matter where they’re going or how long they’re staying. That leads to bringing the same amount of stuff whether anyone needs it or not. Everyone I know who goes backpacking owns two or three bags of different sizes and use cases. Day pack, expedition pack, hydration pack, maybe even a doggy backpack. I knew I didn’t want to bring my expedition pack on this trip, because we wouldn’t be camping and I wouldn’t need to bring bedding, a tent, a first aid kit, a cookpot, or any of that type of gear. If I had the big bag, I’d be tempted to fill it with ten changes of clothes and four pairs of shoes. I could hear Future Me cussing myself out. THEY HAVE LAUNDRY ROOMS IN OTHER PARTS OF THE WORLD I can be a flaming skinflint at times, and it’s tough for me to lay down the money on something expensive like a new backpack. There’s a part of me that still thinks $40 is a lot of money, the part that still thinks in 1980s prices, and anything more than that goes down the mental CANNOT AFFORD oubliette. We amortize these things, though. When we spend money on things we actually use, they pay for themselves. It’s the stuff we buy and don’t use, like clothes we never wear or groceries that we throw out uneaten, that costs us. My husband pointed out, when we were buying our camping gear for our big Iceland trip, that we would save so much money by not renting a car or staying in hotels that the gear would pay for itself several times over. We could literally leave it all in a pile before we got on our plane home and still save money. Instead, every single piece of it is still in active use several years later. Not only does buying high-end gear pay for itself over time, it changes the nature of how we spend our time. Investing in a bunch of backpacking gear made us think of ourselves as backpackers. We went on to save money traveling in Spain the same way. Part of why suitcases lead to worse travel experiences is that they leave open a lot of default behavior. Overpacking is a “stuff problem” and it is also a time problem. Choosing and folding and packing more stuff takes longer. That’s part of where people start pushing the limit on how late they can leave for the airport. It’s hard on the way there, and it’s even harder on the way back, because time packing is time robbed from the trip itself. We cut the time table too close, and then we’re throwing things over our shoulder into the gaping maw of the huge bag. It never fits as well the second time! When I use a suitcase, I don’t fold or roll my clothes and I don’t use packing cubes, either. I line up the shoulders and waistbands with the edge of the suitcase, then fold in the sleeves and pant legs and hemlines. Smallclothes like socks fit around the edges. I know it will all fit because I only bring four changes of clothes. (Often the same stuff I wore last time I went somewhere). I can pack my bag in under five minutes. I can pack in under five minutes because I have experience, and also because I have discipline. I can play dress-up in my closet at home any time. I don’t want to spend time on my trip, expensive time I might add, with my finger on my lip musing over what to wear. We’re essentially paying by the minute when we’re traveling, and I can watch the dial on that mental meter spinning and spinning. A funny moment came up on our last day in London that proved my husband’s point about the backpacks. We had decided to visit the British Museum, conveniently near our train station, and we had already checked out of our hotel. We took the Underground and walked several blocks. NO ROLLER BAGS ALLOWED We paid to check our backpacks at the coat check. Five pounds each, the most expensive end of the rate schedule. Bags over 8 kg not permitted. They have a big scale embedded in the countertop, and they weigh all the bags to see how much to charge. My husband’s bag hit 8 kg precisely. Mine was 9.5! I quickly estimated what I would need to remove, and got out a bottle of water, my iPad, a book, and my bag of Starburst. 8.1 but they let me check it at that point. The moral: if we had brought roller bags, or heavier backpacks, we would have had to leave the museum and find a locker at the train station, then come back. It would have cost us an hour of precious time. For what? Another change of clothes that we won’t even remember wearing? (Incidentally, 8 kg is a little over 17 lbs and 9.5 is 20 lbs). A backpack is superior to a suitcase in most situations, whether they are stairs, cobblestones, museum coat checks, or a sprint through a terminal. If this backpack, like ours, fits in the overhead bin or under the seat, it can also rule out waiting at baggage claims, searching for lost bags, or paying overweight luggage fees. Now that I have this new bag, I’m going to have to figure out more trips so I can continue to amortize the investment. My hubby said so. Boredom is one way to avoid the fear of missing out. Simply don’t care about anything and have no interests. Problem solved! For those of us who aren’t really capable of feeling bored, FoMO can be a real problem. No matter what we’re doing, there is always something else going on that sounds amazing, there are always tons of choices and alternate paths, and always the potential sense of loss for the roads not taken. It can eat a hole into any experience.
Fortunately all it takes is an attitude adjustment. There are a bunch of ways to do it: First and most boring, we can try to remember how lucky we are that we’re doing this right now instead of, say, lying in bed with the flu, getting a root canal, or loading a moving van. Oh yeah! Suddenly I am remembering what a great day this is! Funny how we only feel like we’re missing out on the variety of appealing options, not the depressing or scary options... We can try to remember that no matter what we’re doing, someone somewhere else in the world is doing something equally interesting. That person might happily trade places with us. Desire for novelty is built into the human system, and in that way we have much in common with crows. Just because we can see the attraction of something else does not mean that the other thing is superior to what we have in front of us. I had occasion to think about this while walking in London. My husband and I passed a pair of Brits. He wore a Los Angeles sweatshirt and she wore a Disneyland t-shirt. They’d gone all the way to our neighborhood at some point, because it is so great, and we had packed up and met them all the way in their neighborhood for the same reason. Hook arms and do-si-do, swing your partner round and round. We can try to remind ourselves that we can always make plans and come back again another time. Travel is simply a question of priorities. There are tons of ways to make it happen, from relocating or working in a travel-related field to house swapping to saving money, and lots and lots more. People are doing it every day. One way of looking at vacation FoMO is to regard it as a sign that we are enjoying ourselves and we’ve discovered something that we like. Not everyone has a passion, not everyone is very much in touch with their sense of fun or their heart’s desire. Longing to stay somewhere or to go back again is a bright blinking arrow pointing in a clear direction. What I’m working on right now is the sense that, rather than missing out on something or anything, I’m really just constantly surrounded by almost infinite possibilities. Every time I read a book, I’m not missing out on a hundred million other books, I just happen to be into that one at that moment. Every time I have a conversation with a friend, I’m not missing out on conversations with other people, I’m just fortunate to be catching up with this particular friend at this moment. When I’m somewhere on vacation, likewise, I’m not missing out on anything. Even though it feels that way sometimes! This FoMO feeling, it’s insidious. It’s like a leak in the ceiling. Everyone told us, when we asked where we should go in London, “Oh, you should definitely see the Sky Garden.” Never mind that it turned out to be booked solid for the entire window of availability. Same thing with the Buckingham Palace garden tour. If we were to shed a tear every time something like that happened on a trip, we’d never have any fun at all. Instead we realize that a place like London is absolutely full of magnificent parks and gardens, most of which are free to visit, have no lines, and include plenty of places to sit. We find ourselves in Kensington Gardens, with ringneck parrots landing on us and eating out of our hands, something we had no idea would be a possibility on our trip, or in this lifetime. FoMO is a denial of serendipity. Ultimately it’s a way of trying to control that which should not always be controlled. The point of travel is to see the world the way it is, not the way we’ve imagined it from our sofa cushions at home. It works so much better when we leave room for a bit of magic. In that sense we’re only really missing out when we stay at home and refuse to disrupt our boring old routine. Comparing methods of dealing with jet lag is my gift to the world. I’m convinced that sleep is mystical and that what works for one person may not work for someone else. I’m somewhat less convinced that somewhere out there is the perfect method for me. Why quit trying, though?
What follows is a rundown of three methods of defraying the mental cost of jet lag. The first time we came to Europe, we flew to Iceland to live in a tent. We didn’t sleep at all on the flight, thanks to a young family, the father of whom sat by himself on one side of the aisle refusing to help his wife deal with their children on the other, both of whom occupied themselves by continually kicking our seats. Keep this in mind if you are jet lagged and trying desperately to stay awake. Simply find a place with seat-kicking children and they will gladly assist. On the Iceland trip, we set up our tent in the morning and “took a nap,” which used almost our entire first day. This method is not recommended for adjusting to a new time zone seven hours away. On our second trip, meeting in Hamburg, I decided to try pre-adjusting by going to bed half an hour earlier every night for two weeks. I relied on melatonin at the time, and it’s hard to tell how much of a factor that was. The night before I left, I had night terrors and woke up standing in my bathroom. I barely slept on the plane and was so tired I stood in the EU line at customs because I thought it stood for “Estados Unidos.” Then I couldn’t remember how to operate a turnstile. Went to bed and snapped awake at 2:00 AM for three hours. But then, by the second night I was adjusted to local time. That is the main thing to keep in mind about jet lag. It’s generally terrible on the first day, but if you eat meals at the local time and make yourself get up in the local morning, it basically goes away. What happens if you try to stay on your home schedule for sleep and meals? I have no idea. I’ve never tried. My motivation in travel is to see as much as I can see, and see everything I can’t experience at home. I want to look at nature in daylight and I want to visit attractions while they are open. Most things that are open at night, like theaters and clubs and bars and shopping centers, are basically the same as what we have at home, so it doesn’t pay to sleep through it. On this trip, I followed my husband’s method. A frequent business traveler, jet lag is a persistent problem he can’t afford to have. He takes a Benadryl at local bedtime. Personally I don’t do well on Benadryl, so I tried Unisom. Can I say, I think we’ve got it?? I took a Unisom at 6 PM my time on the plane and sort of slept lightly for six hours. We landed at noon local time. I didn’t feel all that tired or dopey and I was even able to navigate a turnstile. These are the past travel mistakes that I did not make: Did not leave my coat in the overhead bin and have to run back for it Did not get yelled at by customs officials Did not tell anyone the wrong airline and have them wait for me in the wrong terminal Did not get on the wrong transportation heading the wrong direction We were able to find our way through the airport, go through customs, find the Underground station, board a train, and make it all the way to our station without mishap. Then we got out on the wrong level and found ourselves out back by the service doors, and got redirected by some station employees. “Are you lost?” “No” “If you’re talking to us, you’re lost. There’s no one else out here but us.” We made it to the hotel and managed to resist the siren call of the mattress. We went out and walked around in the natural afternoon daylight until dinnertime. My husband, who had only slept four hours, was out cold before the clock struck eight. I made it another hour. We both woke up at 9 AM local time, having slept at least twelve hours each. Feels like success. That’s my new jet lag method. No more spending two weeks trying to adjust in advance. No more napping in the middle of the day. And if anyone else allows their children to kick our seats on the plane, we’re going to make them trade seats with us. We’re going on an international trip, and you can trust this advice on packing, because I am literally typing it up in the back of a Lyft on the way to the airport. I finished using this method under two hours ago and there’s no time to change my mind.
That’s what it all comes down to, isn’t it? Changing your mind? Like, packing in a rational manner based on experience and real world activities is excruciating and unfair? All that really matters on this trip is that I feel that I have at least twelve separate cute outfits to spread around the room? I don’t get it. To me, underpacking would be a fabulous excuse to go out and shop. Not that I enjoy shopping, but there is that possibility that a foreign store might have some kind of exotic garment I would cherish forever. If I overpack, there will be no opportunity or space for such a magical item. Aren’t I then missing out more by overstuffing my bag than I would be by leaving things behind? I did buy something like this once. We were in Akureyri, and there was a super cute vintage boutique, and we went in because I had lost so much weight backpacking around Iceland that I needed a belt. Someone had put up a collection of locally designed t-shirts, and I bought one with a white raven on it. I loved that shirt and wore it probably once a week for two years. Now it’s in my go bag, where I see it now and then when I check inventory. (The belt got worn until eventually it was recycled). Backpacking is how I learned how many changes of clothes to bring on a trip. Four days are my limit for a camping expedition, based on how much food I can carry. It turns out that’s the outer limit for a damp microfiber towel as well. Therefore, I know four changes of clothes will fit in my bag and I know to plan a trip to the laundromat by the fourth day. “But I can still fit more in my bag!” Great, then your bag won’t weigh as much and you have room for souvenirs. Or you can switch to a smaller bag, or share one large bag with your travel buddy, or stop needing a checked bag. Unlike packing piles of extra clothes, going minimalist actually does result in endless options. Wear one, pack four. Simple. It solves so many problems. The “wear one” is the travel outfit. I have two reliable travel outfits, depending on the weather. Whichever one I wear, it’s mostly irrelevant to the rest of the trip. I’m wearing it both directions. I know that what I will be wearing has pockets and layers and that it’s stain-resistant. Most trips are going to be short enough in duration that it doesn’t matter if the individual garments mix and match. I can fit four changes of clothes and at least two pairs of shoes in my carry-on. It can get tight if it’s heavy winter and I need thermal underwear, but it still works. For advanced travelers, there is this concept of the capsule wardrobe, where almost every garment goes with almost everything else. I decided to extend this idea to my everyday wardrobe, and not worry about having special vacation outfits. This has definitely helped to ramp down my packing anxiety. “But but but... what if Lawrence of Arabia and Antonio Banderas show up to take me out in their limo and I need a BALL GOWN with a CRINOLINE???” Well then. I’m sure when that happens there will be a fancy outfit laid out for me when they show me to my changing room. In the meantime, I’m going to assume that this trip isn’t going to be that type of movie. While I do live in a musical, borne out by the fact that our Lyft driver was singing along with “Hey There Delilah” on the way here, so far it hasn’t required much in the way of full costume changes. I don’t wait for adventure to happen to me. I bring my own. What about the “pack four” outfits? It literally doesn’t matter which four outfits I pack. They don’t have to mix or match. Sometimes if they do, it causes confusion, or I stain something and the whole edifice comes crashing down. I just lay them out across the bed, A B C D, making sure each stack has the appropriate socks etc. The other trick is to make sure everything goes with one or the other of two pairs of shoes. Wear one, pack one. Ideally you will be wearing the bulkier, heavier pair on the plane, unless they are very fancy boots with lots and lots of eyelets to unlace at security. This trip, just like our last trip, is going to involve a combination of hot weather and cold, rainy weather. This is annoying, but it isn’t changing my formula. I’ve simply packed two hot weather outfits and two sets of cold weather outfits. We have already planned to do laundry at our hotel on two occasions during the trip. Since we’ll be going different places every day, it’s not like anyone will notice or care that we’re repeating the same outfits. It seems like there might be another advantage. When we go through our photos after the trip, it will look like we’ve been very very busy and that we’ve seen a bunch of tourist attractions on the same day. Wow, you guys really get around! We’re in the lounge right now, as I finish this up, and I’m proud to say that I can pick up my travel backpack with one hand and hoist it onto my shoulder. We were able to carry all our stuff up flights of stairs and walk quickly. We haven’t had to squabble about luggage and we haven’t had to pay extra. We both agree on the policy of Wear One, Pack Four, and I’m pretty sure it will work for anyone It’s that time of year again! I’m in town for the World Domination Summit, which is once again sold out. I’ve got party costumes, I’ve got a new day planner, I’ve got exciting plans and a big bushel of anticipation. This has been the event around which I plan everything I do for several years now, and I’m making the most of it.
There’s a lot to be said for using the middle of the year as a planning break. One of the reasons that so many people bag on New Year’s Resolutions is that there’s no built-in checkpoint until the following New Year’s Eve. Another is that a lot of people would rather do nothing at all than be perceived as following a trend. Yet another is that there seems to be a sense that resolutions are about self-deprivation or joyless discipline. There’s also the problem that winter is bogus in and of itself. I choose to frame it differently. This is my life, and thus it’s also my year. I want to fill every year with awesome things. If I don’t take steps to fit in my own plans, my time will be filled with other people’s priorities. All I will wind up doing is work, chores, errands, consumption of passive entertainment, news outrage, and listening to other people vent. Oh, and gaining five pounds, mustn’t forget that. This is why I step away and why I do quarterly check-ins, which I could do even if there were no such thing as WDS and even if I had no vacation time and even if I couldn’t go anywhere. Anyone can still pause for breath and a moment to ask, Is this what I really want to be doing with my one wild and precious life? Is all this working for me? Do I have any better ideas? It helps, of course, to be surrounded by a few thousand people who are doing the same thing. It helps to run around making new friends, taking classes, and listening to inspirational speakers. It helps to ask, what would this look like if it were fun? (What if the focus of my budget was travel or retiring early?) (What if my workout involved hula hoop tricks or acrobatics?) (What if I really could dye my hair in rainbow streaks and get away with it?) The first year my husband and I signed up for WDS, it changed our life. We went home, got rid of 80% of our stuff, sold our car, and moved to the beach. We started saving half our income. My husband is working on his fourth patent and I’m about to file the final paperwork to become a Distinguished Toastmaster. Throughout the year, I think to myself, what am I going to have to say for myself at WDS next year? When people ask me what I do, or what I got out of the event, what am I going to tell them? This is challenging for me in a lot of ways, because I’m a shy person and I don’t really like to talk about myself. Icebreaker exercises are hard for me and I tend to get vapor-locked. “What is something interesting about you?” “Uhhhhh....” Who would want that in their eulogy, though? One of the many possible motives for leading a more awesome life is that it proves to other people that it can be done. You don’t need permission. You can change jobs, move, make new friends, set new boundaries in your relationships, change your appearance, and even change your mind, your industry, or the world itself. You can learn new things. You can, in point of fact, change anything you want, and you can do it with delight and intrigue. Now pardon me, I’m off to playland. Go out and dominate! This isn’t a staycation. It’s a sleepvacation. It’s important to know that going in.
A staycation can involve a lot of things that aren’t sleep. Some people use them to do a home remodel project, check out tourist stuff in their home town, or binge-watch TV series. In that sense it’s similar to a sleepvacation, because both involve bumming around in pajamas. I’m setting the parameters going in, because all I want is to SLEEP and sleep is what I’m gonna do. I’m tired. I haven’t slept well in a year. I’m so tired that sleep is almost the only thing I think about. It finds its way into every conversation. People can’t even ask me how I am without winding up on the receiving end of a rant about my upstairs neighbors. It’s time to do something about it. I went out of town for a family weekend to celebrate my brother’s birthday. All I could talk about was how tired I was. Suddenly I had a random idea, and tossed it out there. “I should house-sit for people so I can catch up on sleep.” My other brother and his wife looked at each other and then back at me. “Well actually...” I had no idea, but they had a trip planned for later in the season, and they were going to pay a dog sitter. If I housesat for them instead, I could watch the dog, keep an eye on the house, and water the plants. My dog walker charges less than theirs, so everyone would come out ahead. Obviously this setup works best for location-independent people, students, or the unemployed. I have used house-sitting as a side hustle in all those scenarios. A jobbed person can do it if it’s in the same city or convenient to the work commute. Ten days!!! The only trouble with the certainty of the upcoming sleepvacation is knowing that it’s still months away. I have a countdown calendar going on. In some ways, the existence of the sleepvacation makes the whole neighbor situation easier to bear. It helps to feel like it is temporary, that this sleep-deprived year will one day be just a blip in my personal history. It also helps to feel like there is at least one alternative option, that I can maybe escape for other housesitting junkets. We have some upcoming vacations planned, which also helps to fill out the calendar with ‘sleep anywhere other than here’ options. It’s not the same, though. Hotels tend to be chock-full of loud late-night drama and people utterly failing to realize how thin the walls are. Also children running up and down the hallways at 7:00 AM, hooting and shrieking. (If you let your kids do this, you probably also let them kick people’s seats on planes, don’t you? Don’t you??) Our culture spits on sleep. It’s contrary to the Puritan work ethic. Yeah, you’re tired, so is everyone else, what’s your point? What could possibly be more boring than going to bed early rather than going out? Or knowing nothing about a show that everyone else stayed up late to binge-watch? Sleep is just making yourself irrelevant. Pointless. I say fie to all that. I like sleeping, it’s free, and it makes you better-looking. I also happen to think that the reason everyone is so testy and thin-skinned these days is that we’re all sleep-deprived. At least that’s my excuse. I fantasize about sleepvacation. Should I bring my own pillow? Or order another one and have it delivered? Am I going to do a lot of yoga? Should I bring my yoga mat? *snort* Is yoga sleeping? Then NO Am I going to do a lot of healthy cooking? Is cooking sleeping? Then NO I am going to make precisely two grocery shopping trips, and I am going to eat canned soup and frozen dinners. What I ought to do is eat large quantities of waffles at dinnertime because they make me schleeeeepy Am I going to bring a bunch of outfit changes? Are they pajamas? Am I going to bring makeup? Haha, no Am I going to research activities and new restaurants like I do for normal vacations? Do I plan to sleep there? Then NO Basically I should make a list of everything I do for a normal trip and then cross it off. Normal vacation: fun, exciting, action-packed, interesting, high-value. Sleepvacation: sleeping. Packing is so much easier when you really only plan to do one thing. It’s basically: stuff for the plane trip, and pajamas. Eye mask, check. White noise app, check. Mouth guard, dang it, yes, check. Sleep tracker, check. The one productive thing I do have planned around the sleepvacation is the period immediately following it. The day or two after I get home. I am hoping that I will retain a bit of the glow of well-restedness that is one of the few genuine compliments a woman in her mid-forties tends to receive. “You look well-rested.” Ah, thank you so much, yes, I work hard at that. I went to Cancun in my early thirties, a siblings trip, and we stayed in a run-down timeshare. It happened to have some sort of fluffy pad instead of a proper mattress. I have never slept so beautifully in my life. I loved that thing and I wish I had had the sense to steal it. I must have slept twelve hours a day. It took two weeks at my lame job for that peaceful, well-rested feeling to wear off. That’s my fantasy for my sleepvacation. Blissful sleep, hours and hours of it, minus the all-night dance club up the street. Sleepvacation. I’m making it happen. Is it weird that when I plan to go on a trip, the first thing I think about is what I’m going to read?
I’ve always been disciplined about what clothes I pack. The main reason is that, back in the bad old days, I needed to leave enough room in my bags for all the books I wanted to bring. People would help me with my suitcase and ask, over and over again: “What have you got in here, bricks?” Or, sometimes: “...books?” Now we have e-readers and I can bring literally dozens of books everywhere I go without adding extra weight. My formula: (BxD)+2 Where B = book unit and D = number of days So, for a five-day journey, I would need a minimum of seven books. This policy has served me well. An example would be the day that I flew home from New Zealand and got bumped from my connecting flight five times in a row. I had an eight-hour layover. Not only did I finish an entire paperback book while I sat there, I can even tell you which book: The Two Mrs. Grenvilles by Dominick Dunne. Fabulous. In practice, I know that I have maybe an hour a day of solid reading time on vacation. That’s maybe 60-100 pages, depending on the book. I don’t plan my reading material based on Plan A. This is my backup plan, Plan B for Book. ABAB! Always Bring A Book This is the plan that served me while I sat on the floor in an airport in North Carolina for five hours while everything was closed. Likewise, five hours on a snowy afternoon at Portland International. I have a special file folder for all the vouchers we have collected after delayed flights. That folder tells me that my flights are more likely to be delayed than to be on time. Delay means reading time. That’s not even a bad thing! The last time I flew, I had the middle seat (of course) between two people who did not bring a single thing to do for a three-hour flight. I ask of you. What did you think you were going to do while you were crammed into two square feet of space for three hours? Count threads in the upholstery? Apparently you thought you were going to interrupt me and regale me with the details of your family tree. I’m not just a reader of novels, I’m a storytelling coach. I can tell you right now that even if we were closely related, I could never possibly be interested in the story of your family tree, and neither could anyone else. I don’t care if you’re a direct lineal descendant of Leif Erikson and Mata Hari, there’s no way to make that entertaining. BRING A BOOK. I’d lend you one, but honestly, what are the chances that you’ll share my interests? I usually can’t even coordinate reading material with my husband, my brother, or my niece, much less a random stranger. My dad likes the commercial paperback form factor. Since he works for an airline, he travels constantly, and his practice is to give away whatever he’s reading when he’s done. Then he doesn’t have to pack it home. It’s surprising how hard it can be to find a taker for a free bestselling book! Aren’t people reading anymore? It’s starting to become apparent why I have travel reading anxiety. Other people worry about what they’re going to wear, and what if they change their mind, and whether other people will like their outfit and want to talk to them. Obligers! I prefer to use my wardrobe as a sort of social gatekeeper. Hopefully my clothing choices will deter uninteresting people, because my reading choices tend not to. A book in hand is a universally misunderstood symbol. The reader is saying, I so looked forward to this quiet time to enjoy my book uninterrupted. Every remaining inhabitant of the known galaxy interprets it to mean, You are lonely unto death and it is my moral obligation to talk to you every single minute of this journey. This is part of why I like to be in the B group of flights with unassigned seating. I can walk down the aisle and look for another middle-aged lady with a book or a tablet. We can sit companionably reading side by side and protect one another’s bubble of silence. I had to confess to my husband, early into our marriage, that I read on airplanes as a way of dealing with my white-knuckle flying phobia. If I start reading before takeoff, I can pretend more or less successfully that we are on a bus. If I have to look to either side, the jig is up. I’m not an introvert; in fact, I think a lot of people who believe they are introverts are actually shy extroverts like me. I’m an empath. People have been plunking themselves down next to me and telling me their entire life story since I was four years old. Part of why I am such a good and sympathetic listener is my reading habit. It also sets me up to have my energy drained without fair exchange. You want my attention, you want my attention, you want my attention and sympathy (like everyone else does) but all you intend to offer in exchange is a timeline of when you had your children? Or how many cousins you have? Can’t you just recommend a few books that I might like? I’m more than happy to do the same. In fact, I might even offer a few titles for your children, your aunties, and your third cousins twice removed. My next trip is weeks away, and I’m already planning my reading. Audio books for packing, for walking through the airport, for waiting on ground transport. Longform news articles to read offline at the gate. Novels and nonfiction for the flight. I’ve got a wide variety of choices for the wide variety of disruptions that might come up. The next time I’m delayed for five hours with no wifi and nothing to do, I’m ready, and I suggest that everyone else do the same. This is what I know about travel. It’s easier when you don’t bring very much.
This is why I’ve been walking around with fifteen pounds of sand in my backpack. We’re planning another adventure, this time an urban trip, and I’m buying a sub-40-liter pack because my 65-liter expedition pack is too big. I don’t need room for all the things I usually bring, like the sleeping bag and the space blanket and the double set of thermal underwear and the first aid kit and the cooking pot and the stove and the fuel and the solar lantern and the folding chair and the, I might as well just admit to it, the entire two-person sofa that I pack around. Go ahead and laugh. My expedition pack still weighs less than the clothes, shoes, and toiletries that most people bring on trips. I went on a weekend trip with a couple of old friends. The wife had a shower kit that was half the size of my entire suitcase, and then she had a second one! “You brought full-size bottles of shampoo?” I told her it looked like she had a “just in case” bag, and that she’d just grabbed everything from her bathroom that she thought she might need. She nodded, of course, that’s exactly what I did. I showed her my TSA-approved shower bag, and explained that I start with that. If it doesn’t fit, then it can’t come, because I don’t check my bag. Everything I bring fits under the seat on the plane. Start with the container, not the stuff. The way I deal with my desire for a wide selection of shower products is that I have a bunch of 2-oz bottles. You can go even smaller with a few contact-lens cases. The other thing to keep in mind is that... they HAVE SHOWER STUFF in other countries. You can buy toothpaste and soap and deodorant and shampoo. You don’t even have to if you’re staying in a hotel. Not only is it safe to forget stuff or finish it off before you go home, but it’s a shopping opportunity to test out something that may be better quality than what you get at home. People overpack out of insecurity, anxiety, and indecision. This can ruin the trip. The heavier your bag is, the more miserable you’ll be at the airport. Oops, did I say ‘bag,’ singular? I mean, the heavier your multiple unnecessary bags are. You’re doing it to yourself. I’ve seen people travel with suitcases so big that they could crawl inside. In one case, there was nothing really in it except a set of swim fins and some stray towels, and I know that because the owners had it open on the airport floor while they frantically searched for something. Why would someone bring towels on vacation?? The more stuff you bring, the harder it is to tell if you’ve forgotten something important. Really important. The only truly important things to bring on a trip are your ID, because you can’t get through otherwise, and a way to pay for things. You can do the whole thing with a passport and a credit card. Arguably the next two important things are vaccinations and a plan for the trip, although the travel arrangements can also be skipped if you feel ready for the Wing-It Method. I utterly can’t understand why people insist on bringing so many extra duplicate redundant backup changes of clothes. Really? I’m paranoid about getting cold and even I don’t let that trick me into overpacking. I have a points system. I lose one point for every item that I bring on a trip and don’t use. The only exceptions are the first aid kit, which I hope not to need, and extra underwear, because they’re small and lightweight. What’s the point of bringing anything that you don’t use? If you don’t use it, then it is by definition useless. The extra stuff you insisted on dragging around is no more use to you than a fifteen-pound bag of sand. Oh, I suppose a bag of sand could potentially be useful. You could drop it out a window and stop a robbery. You could cut it open and shake the sand out if you needed traction. You could pour it out on the airport floor if there’s a delay and invite other stranded passengers to create a meditative sand mural. You could put it in your bag to weigh it down and deter thieves. Because if even you don’t want your stuff enough to actually use it, then why would anyone else? I walk around with a bunch of sand in my new backpack because I’m testing it out. I’m checking how the load risers are adjusted. I’m reminding myself how tiring it is to climb a flight of stairs with an extra fifteen pounds on your hips and knees and feet. I’m also reminding myself what it felt like to weigh this much without the backpack! I do this a lot. Now that I’m stronger and more active, I travel more, and I have more fun doing it. My husband and I typically walk or hike 8-10 miles a day, including elevation gain and many flights of stairs. We’re strong enough to see everything we want to see without being utterly wrung out and exhausted at the end of the day. I can go three weeks with only four changes of clothes. They, um, they have laundromats. Who cares what you’re wearing? Honestly? You do, or at least you will if you insist on wearing hurty shoes and limping around with bleeding blisters. If you insist on wearing a sundress when it’s really too cold. If you’re so worried about looking cute that you’re late getting ready every day. I know because I made all those mistakes when I was young, and it really got in the way of enjoying travel. Not just for me, but for everyone else on my trip. There is no adventure in bringing a bunch of stuff from your house with you everywhere you go. You already know all about your stuff. If you’re leaving the house at all, it’s to see things and have experiences and meet people. Remember why you’re packing and try not to bring fifteen pounds of sand. Travel planning, isn’t it the worst?
My hubby and I are going on a trip two months from now, and we’ve already booked everything. We have our plane and train tickets, we have our hotel rooms, and we even know where we’re going to eat at the airport. This is the sort of thing that happens to you when you marry an engineer. (Not a locomotive engineer, no. He doesn’t even have a stripy hat). None of this advance planning is natural to me. I’m a wing-it person. I grew up in the travel industry, and I started flying alone at age seven. That’s over thirty-five years, and I’ve never missed a flight. I feel justified in my visceral certainty that flexibility and brainstorming are better than rigid planning and punctuality. Last November, due to a dumb scheduling snafu, I got to the airport just ten minutes before my flight was scheduled to depart. I didn’t even realize it until I was washing my hands in the restroom a hundred yards away. I hadn’t even been through security yet! Against all odds, not only did I catch that flight, but I had to stand around waiting before my boarding group even got in line. I’ve been delayed by everything from snow to a plane with a flat tire to a presidential motorcade. I have always caught my flight. The trouble is that ordinary travelers do not have my decades of freak blunders and delays on which to draw. Most people have an emotional need for a greater sense of urgency than I can provide. Don’t go places with me if you’re tense about being hours early for everything, let’s just put it that way. Here’s another thing: I know how to pack. I’m a minimalist single-bag traveler, and I have been for years. I can cover unlikely distances in an improbable span of time because I can grab my luggage and sprint. I’m halfway there before you have all your straps over your shoulders. There is a group of people who are very organized about time and calendars and schedules. Then there is a group of people who are very organized about objects and spatial relations. These tend not to be the same group. My husband belongs to the first group, and I belong to the second. I’m the one who put the flight time down wrong in my calendar. He’s the one who put his passport on a chair and then lost track of it when it fell to the floor. We can both look at each other and legitimately think, Okay, that would never happen to me. We make a good match. I taught him the virtues of one-bag travel, and he taught me how many more options are available for awesome things when you plan months in advance. For instance, we got the last available hotel room on points in Jackson Hole for the solar eclipse because we booked in January. More than six months in advance. That’s due to him. We were able to grab one of the last first-come-first-served campsites in the Grand Tetons, same trip, because we brought our backpacking gear. That’s due to me. This all started on our honeymoon. We checked into our room in a four-star hotel, right down the hall from another couple. We could safely assume they were married because only a married couple could possibly hate each other so much. They roared at each other for two days. What KIND of PERSON... LEAVES... a BAG??? I SWEAR... I WILL NEVER... GO ANYWHERE... WITH YOU... AGAIN!!! These are touchstones for us, inside jokes that still have us shaking with laughter ten years later. Long after that couple have probably divorced, married other people, and gone on to divorce them as well. How can you leave a bag behind when you each only have one bag, and they’re both lined up neatly by the front door the night before the trip? Don’t people know how to do a proper perimeter check? Why would you even think of marrying someone if you couldn’t travel well together? What are you going to do, stay home every single day for the rest of your life? The truth is that travel can be extremely stressful, especially for people who only do it once every few years. People leave their medications and their glasses behind. They wind up in shoes that make their feet bleed. They set up schedules where they’re standing or walking all day, even when they think one mile is a long distance and they get tired walking through Target. Lack of planning guarantees a miserable trip. That’s why we plan months in advance. Two months is actually pushing it for us. Do we need visas? Do we have the transport and lodging confirmed? What’s the weather like that time of year? What’s closed on Sundays? Where are we going to eat, and what’s on the menu? Is our ID going to expire? Suitcase or backpack? Do we need new clothes or shoes? What kind of electric outlets do they use? What are we going to read on the flight? Where are we going and how long will we want to be there? This used to feel like a dreary amount of work. Then, after a few trips with my esteemed life mate, I started to realize how well it paid off. Not only did it make the trip easier in every way, but it also extended the fun of anticipation. The last time we traveled together, at the New Year, I spent two weeks laying out every meal and every show and attraction in advance. I put it all in the TripIt app and shared it with my hubby. He was elated! Each day laid out in advance, every address and name of venue neatly lined up on a schedule, nothing to do but whip out his phone and show it to a cab driver. We got everywhere on time and enjoyed ourselves immensely. We forgot one thing: to argue about how late we were and all the stuff we left behind. The point of planning far in advance is to make life easier for Future Us. Boring Old Today Me can spend fifteen minutes here and twenty minutes there, putting together a fun and relaxing trip. Future Me reaps the rewards of having no decisions to make. Future Me flits from attraction to attraction, with plenty of time to spare, plenty of naps, and no straps digging into my shoulder. The point of the trip isn’t what we’re wearing or what we’re eating, it’s the memory that we’re creating. |
AuthorI've been working with chronic disorganization, squalor, and hoarding for over 20 years. I'm also a marathon runner who was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and thyroid disease 17 years ago. This website uses marketing and tracking technologies. Opting out of this will opt you out of all cookies, except for those needed to run the website. Note that some products may not work as well without tracking cookies. Opt Out of CookiesArchives
January 2022
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