When Life Demands Your Attention, How to Keep Travel in Your Sights

The Question

How do you get on with your plans when life seems to have a lot of obstacles? I think about life planning as something that includes travel. Sometimes it is hard to focus on that when so many other things grab your attention. I imagine many people are facing challenges similar to ours.

I have been a student of positivity, of radical life restructuring, and of finding ways to create the life I’ve always dreamed of. In that process, I remember when I first came across Dr. Carol Dweck’s idea of Growth Mindset. Sometimes when I think about mindset, I notice myself drifting into judgment, but when I course-correct, I come back to curiosity. What I’ve gone through over the past two years has led me to a different realization: mindset isn’t the goal, it’s the platform. Think about a diver moving through the air with precision and entering the water with barely a splash. None of that happens without the platform. It has to be high, strong, and solid. You need something solid to push off from when entering any new phase of your life.

So the real question becomes: Where are you standing right now?

This is something I’ve written about more directly in Safety Third!

Let’s Start with Instability

Anasazi Ruins, at Hovenweep National Monument. Photo by Wendy Stieg

Here is what the past two years have actually looked like: We walked away from well-paying jobs that were unhealthy places to work in an attempt to build something better in our lives. We had high hopes. But those hopes didn’t hold up against the reality of trying to live and work in the Four Corners region, where it’s hard to find your footing unless you already have income, strong connections, or a bit of luck before you arrive. I was without work for 18 months. I finally found a job, and then Paul lost his. We tried to buy a home in Portugal, but the deal fell through because of job instability. We took a real risk, and it didn’t pan out.

I’m not going to pretend this has been easier than it is. It has been brutal. I have not slept in two years.

I’ve seen this pattern play out before, which I wrote about in The Chateau Fights Back.

The Shift

Madrid Architecture. Photo by Wendy Stieg

I was searching for positively framed YouTube videos when I came across a new one from Gabrielle Bernstein. She does a good job helping you reframe things so you can find your way back to a more positive state. But in this video, she said something different. She talked about how there are times when you’re so far down in it that you can’t just flip a switch and feel better. She doesn’t say, “Just be positive,” and she’s right; that doesn’t work. There’s a difference between being a generally positive person and going through something genuinely hard. Telling someone to “just be positive” ignores what they’re actually experiencing.

What stayed with me most was this idea of moving toward relief. Not happiness. Not fixing everything. Just relief. If you can acknowledge how you feel and that gives you even a small amount of relief, that’s a step. Sometimes that looks like taking a day off and sleeping. Sometimes it means letting yourself cry. You don’t jump to higher emotional states in an attempt to become happy. That comes later, after you’ve taken care of yourself in smaller, more honest ways. She also talks about finding one small thing that is working in your life right now. That combination of relief and recognition was enormously helpful. It made me realize that all of that instability was bound to create internal friction. I’m a normal human having a normal reaction, and that’s okay.

If you’re curious, I’ll link the video here: How To Master the Law of Attraction in Just 12 Minutes, by Gabrielle Bernstein.

What Relief Looks Like

Sé Catedral de Silves. Photo by Wendy Stieg

Coming to that realization means that I don’t have to be deliriously happy. I just need to reach for relief. Ironically, once I discovered the idea of allowing my emotional state to be what it is and to reach for relief, it seemed to coincide with Paul getting a job. We put the house on the market in January, and we are having weekly showings, which is better than what it looked like last summer when we tried to sell the house. Friends keep showing up, offering places to stay, pickup trucks, a shoulder to cry on, and dinner, all out of the blue. It confirms my general experience that mindset and positivity do set the stage for success.

That didn’t happen in the way I thought it would. Instead, we are beginning to see movement. Up until now, things felt really stuck. Not everything is fixed, but we are no longer feeling stuck.

Letting Go of Control

The Sun Rises Anyway. Photo by Wendy Stieg

I was in charge of selling the last two houses. I was the one who wasn’t working yet, so I had the time to do the repairs, the paint touch-ups, all of it. This time is different. The house is already in great shape, so there isn’t much to do, but someone still has to be in charge of it, at least until Paul is fully settled in Montrose. He’ll be working four ten-hour shifts, which means he’ll be home Friday through Sunday and can help more. But right now, he is the one running the show. He’s making the decisions about when to talk to the realtor, carrying the weight of the sale, and making sure we don’t end up in a situation like we did last time. We left a significant amount of money on the table before, and that felt awful.

At first, I had a hard time with that shift. I found myself thinking, “Wait, how do I let this go?” This has always been my role. But slowly, that feeling started to change. I realized I don’t have to carry this the way I have before. And now, I’m actually grateful that I don’t have to be the one holding all of it. He was stressed today, handling some of it, and I don’t want that for him, but at the same time, this feels like a well-earned reprieve for me. I’ve carried this before. I don’t have to carry it in the same way this time. The truth is, he is doing a great job handling everything, and for that I am deeply grateful.

The Choice

Hallway Near Silves Castle. Photo by Wendy Stieg

In unstable moments, there is a choice. You can let it wear you down, or you can decide not to stay in frustration. I think that’s what people mean when they talk about grit: not pushing harder, but refusing to let life pull you around in a way that leaves you exhausted and stuck. I don’t want to live like that anymore. Something in me has shifted. And that shift is what allows me to see this whole situation differently. Our life is a work of art, obstacles and all. We do see something great within it, even with the challenges.

The Reframe

We are all works in progress. We are never completely done. That’s the perspective this shift has brought me back to.In my time talking to travel agents every day, I get to learn firsthand about that resilience. I sell luxury travel to travel agents. It is a far cry from working with children in the public school system. It is a different level of concern, but one thing is for sure: we are not saving lives. I deeply appreciate people who save lives.

I, on the other hand, might be helping someone complete their bucket list. Or maybe they have survived a disease, or suffered great loss, and are trying to heal. I don’t always know why people take large, expensive trips, but I do know there are many times when doing that work means someone else gets to reach for relief. The travel agents who help them set this all up are tenacious. They will do whatever it takes to make sure you have a beautiful trip. Even more impressive is the number of older women who are still working. I really don’t see that as a bad thing. In fact, having a sense of purpose is a key tenet of longevity. I work with women well into their 70s and even 80s, which is incredible when you think about how much technology has changed in such a short period of time, and they are still complete badasses. So what if what looks like a problem is, in fact, a diamond in the rough?

This brings me to Michelangelo. It is said that he saw David in that now-famous block of marble, not that he created it out of nothing, but that David was already there, waiting to be freed from the surrounding stone. Can we look at our lives the same way? Does Michelangelo see a moving truck out there somewhere, waiting to be freed for our use through a simple transaction? I hope so, because I know a moving truck is in my future, and if Michelangelo can see that coming, then maybe moving won’t be so bad. Maybe my life isn’t wrong. Maybe it just hasn’t been freed yet.

Despite this renewed sense of capacity, there has been a shift I didn’t expect. To be clear, things are still unresolved. We still have to sell the house, we still have to buy a house, and yes, there is going to be a moving truck again. Let’s just say I have moved a few times in my life. That said, a strange sort of space has opened up. I am consciously deciding to have less of a grip on the outcome. I am, for once, giving myself space to breathe, think, and feel. With that comes a renewed sense of trust, faith, call it what you will.

In Closing

Calm Waters. Sanlucar Spain. Photo by Wendy Stieg

With that space, something else started to come back into view. Not in a fully formed, everything-is-figured-out kind of way, but enough to feel direction again. Most travel advice focuses on the finished trip, the outcome, the moment when everything finally comes together. But life rarely works that way. Selling the house, buying differently, saving money, and moving toward Europe all point to a kind of geographic freedom that had felt out of reach for a while. None of it is certain, but it feels real again. And what I am starting to understand is that I don’t have to wait for everything to be resolved before I move forward. Life is planning in real time, in real life. I can begin without having every detail locked in. I can have a sense of where I’m going without knowing exactly when or how it will all come together. This is hard, and things are also working. I don’t need full resolution to take the next step. Relief creates movement, and movement creates possibility. Turns out, I still have something to stand on.

I’ve written about this idea of moving forward before everything feels certain in How to Know When You’re Ready to Book a Trip.

Michelangelo and the Moving Truck