Hello again! I had plans to keep up on newsletters when I was back home, but clearly that didn’t happen. My brain didn’t really want to work that hard, and it was nice to shut off and zone out for a few weeks. Rest assured, newsletters are coming back to their roughly weekly cadence.
Given I’ve been at home, this newsletter will look different. I haven’t done a lot of activities, visited new places, or taken many pictures. Instead, my time has been filled by being with friends and family, running, and a few days of skiing. The rest has been largely empty space. I’ve slept a lot. I haven’t thought very hard about much of anything. It’s been nice having no agenda. No figuring out how to get from place to place or what to do to make the most of my 3-4 days in a city.
On the other side, it’s also been a huge 180 from the last few months. If I’m being honest it was a difficult adjustment, made even more strange by the fact that I knew it was temporary before I left again. It’s as if I was stuck with one foot in and one foot out the door.
All that said, this week is going to be a compilation of journal entries from my time at home. It’ll probably feel a bit disjointed, which, realistically, is a pretty accurate description of how I’ve felt over the past few weeks. Not everything is meant to connect together. I might repeat myself at times. Each is simply a snapshot of what was important to me at the time I was writing.
After those, we’ll get to my plans for phase two of traveling for the next couple months (which have just begun!).
All the photos this week are ones I’ve taken at some point or another in Washington. I realized I have far fewer than I’d like to, but looking back through the photos I do have has reminded me how lucky those of us are that get to call Washington home. There’s more than a 0% chance that I’m biased, but I’ll let you be the judge of that.
Hope you enjoy.
REFLECTIONS
Home.
I’ve attempted to start this a handful of times, and I can’t get past the word home without tears completely filling my eyes.
Home. A place I haven’t been in 19 weeks.
Home. A place where I am known.
Home. A place that is so, so beautiful.
Home. A place where I know exactly what cupboard to look in.
Home. A place that is comfortable. A place that is familiar.
Home. A place that I have taken for granted most of my life.
Home carries many meanings, and it is unique to each person. It’s important, yet I’ve never really given home too much thought before. I’ve always been there and in some ways, it’s just always been what it is.
Then I left. For 19 weeks. Sometimes I look at that number and it doesn’t seem like that long. Others, it feels like an eternity. In those 19 weeks I’ve seen six countries. I’ve had hundreds of conversations. Several of them I’ve really enjoyed. I’ve made a handful of friends. I have done more activities than most people do in years. I’ve learned more about myself. I’ve cried, a lot. Tears of joy, tears of sadness, and all the kinds in-between. I’ve seen many beautiful places, and a few of them I even felt I could live there.
And now, I’m sitting on a plane leaving Queenstown, New Zealand, and I’m coming home. It’s wrecking me. It’s wrecking me in ways I was not expecting, and I’m not even there yet. I’m still parsing out a lot of what I’m actually feeling, but right now, this is what’s standing out.
Traveling is lonely.
This isn’t inherently negative. Without loneliness, I cannot fully appreciate the value of connection. Without loneliness, I do not understand the impact of being truly seen and known. Without loneliness, I cannot see the shortcomings of self sufficiency. Without loneliness, I do not see how much more full life is when experienced beside someone else. Without loneliness, I would not understand the sacredness of having a partner with whom all of life can be shared.
I feel most alive in two spaces.
The first is outside in nature. Being active. On a bike. On a run. On a hike. Jumping out of a plane. Looking at the world around me and being able to sit in awe of how beautiful creation is.
No other entertainment can come close to the captivation of a sunrise over the mountains, taking a step over a ledge attached to a mountain by a single cable, to sitting under shelter watching the night sky light up with bolts and hearing loud claps of thunder.
The second is sitting with people. Intentionally. Slowly. Learning about them. Humbly attempting to help them understand themselves more fully. One of the greatest joys of life is simply being with others. Celebrating, grieving, growing are all so much more profound when with others. We were built to be in relationship.
Feelings are complex, and I’m beginning to believe that understanding them is one of the most crucial skills one can develop.
When we are not in touch with our feelings, one of two things happens.
- They control us and lead to impulsivity.
- We suppress them and they reveal themselves much further down the line in other (often unfruitful) ways we weren’t expecting.
As we become more aware of our feelings, we gain a more holistic picture of ourselves. Fears, desires, patterns. We become more present. We process experiences differently. We gain greater control over ourselves and our behavior. It’s hard for me to describe the scope of impact this has had on me, but it is not hyperbole to say it has been transformative.
My trip is now only a memory.
This is hitting me hard.
On my trip, even as I would leave a city or country, I would step into a new one. There wasn’t much time to think about the experiences that I had last week when I wanted to have new ones this week. But coming home signaled the end of chapter one of traveling. I am no longer a tourist. I’m not “visiting” Seattle. There are no more active experiences immediately in front of me. My trip is now completely in the past, and that’s an odd and sad feeling.
Conversations at home have been strange. When you’re at home, you’re around people that are at home. Everyone’s seasons look different, but generally there is a sense of common understanding of what everyone’s life looks like. When you’re traveling, you’re around a lot of people that are traveling. Everyone’s travels look different, but there’s still a sense of common ground.
Now, returning home after traveling for months feels like it’s broken that sense of commonality. My mind is still in travel mode. I haven’t thought about the day to day rhythm of a job, weekend plans, or what’s happening in Seattle for a long time. And that’s the space that nearly my entire community has been in the past few months. I feel like I’ve temporarily forgotten how to connect on that level. I don’t want to rattle off story after story from my trip, and at the same time, I’ve found myself struggling to do anything different.
I dread the question “how was your trip?”. I don’t know how to sum up the busiest and most dynamic season of my life into an answer that does justice to it. However I answer, I feel like people do their best to listen but don’t fully understand.
It’s not really anyone’s fault. The basis of empathy is having similar experiences. And I’ve just had one hell of an experience that, especially in the US, is very atypical. I can count on two hands the number of people I personally know who have done something similar.
At the same time, it’s been so nice being around people that I don’t have to start over with. People who know me, and who I can pick right back up where I left off with. People who I can talk with or be silent with and it’s comfortable. People with whom there is no pressure to perform. I miss these relationships and I take them for granted when I am at home.
There’s this sneaky logic that can work it’s way into my thoughts where I substitute the fact that I can hang out with a friend with actually spending time with them. Accessibility makes it feel less pressing to connect. I don’t want to take time for granted anymore. I want to spend more time with those I enjoy being with because life is better when shared with others.
I’ve always believed my memory isn’t that great. Countless times friends record details of events that happened years ago that I was a part of but have no recollection of. But last night, my view on this shifted a bit. I was laying in bed reflecting about the whirlwind of life that the past four months has been. I went back to the morning I hugged my parents goodbye and walked onto my plane. I went back to my first newsletter I wrote. I walked through my entire first month of travel – locations, activities, and people. I could have kept going had I not fallen asleep. I could tell you every single city I went to, everything I saw and did there, who I met and maybe even what we talked about, and miss less than 5% of those details. Sure, it’s fresh. But on the flipside, I’ve did so much in the last two weeks of New Zealand that I wouldn’t be shocked if I’d forgotten everything before that.
So what? What does that mean?
Several things come to mind.
- Moments of novelty form stronger memories.
- Moments of intense emotion form stronger memories.
- Writing things down helps solidify memories.
- Memories are reflections of what we believe to be meaningful.
My memory might not be bad. It might just be targeted towards different kinds of stories and experiences than other people’s.
A few weeks back, I was talking to someone about my trip. I posed the question of whether or not she’d ever had any desire to do something similar. She expressed a tension between wanting to, and recognizing what she would be leaving behind if she did. She was content and grateful with the life she’d built in the last few years.
“There’s something honoring and sacred about continuing to invest in the community you’re rooted in.”
That’s the phrase she used that stuck with me. She’s right. Leaving isn’t superior to staying. Staying isn’t superior to leaving. Each is a choice that carries a different set of opportunities and trade-offs.
They can both be chosen out of fear. Some people stay put out of a fear of change. Some people leave to run away from what is at home.
They can also both be chosen intentionally, and that’s my hope for how I (and we) make decisions. In most cases, there is no right or wrong. Different seasons hold different opportunities, and as long as we are intentional about the ones we are choosing (best processed in community, I might add), I think it’s hard to go wrong.
BLOG POSTS
Although I haven’t written anything new, I have worked on backfilling all of my past newsletters onto my website. So if you’re new around here, missed a newsletter or two, or want to re-read any of them – you can find them all in the Newsletter Archive!
NEXT UP
Saturday marked the end of my brief stint back home. After a 24 hour trip, I arrived in Bolivia late Sunday night. Phase 2 has officially begun. The plan is to be here for 3-4 weeks, followed by 4-5 weeks in Peru, and then a week or two in Colombia.
I’m taking a bit of a different approach on this trip. In phase one of my trip, I consistently moved quickly. It was fun, but it also became exhausting at times. I don’t have a huge desire to repeat that. So, my plan is to balance a bit of time moving quickly with some longer breaks in cities where I’ll focus around a particular activity. My longer stop in Bolivia will be in Sucre to take a few weeks of Spanish school (I am quickly realizing the culture around tourists and speaking English is VERY different here than in Asia). Huaraz will be my longer stop in Peru, filled with at least one long multi-day trek, potentially two (if you want the sneak preview – go check out pictures of the Huayhuash hike). Potentially another week of Spanish school in a different city as well. If I make it to Colombia, I’ve always wanted to learn how to dance, so I might take some salsa classes.
That’s the plan. But as I learned in the fall, plans are really just a framework, so we’ll see how long this one sticks before I get off track again.
As always, if you know anyone that you think would be interested in anything I’m writing about, I’d ask that you consider sharing this with them.
Thanks for being here. Talk to you next week.
– Trevor