Vacation State of Mind

I love to travel.  I love the adventure of going somewhere new, of finding fun little places for a cup of tea or perfect pastry. I enjoy meeting new people and exploring areas that are off the beaten path. Traveling gives me a chance to see the world and how other people live and come back home with a fresh perspective.

I'm hardly lacking when it comes to travel adventures. I get the chance to go on a big trip to our Short Wing Piper Club convention each year (like our trip to Utah last summer) and have gone many, many other places and have been on amazing adventures. But the silly thing is I have this tendency to compare myself with people who get to travel more than I do. And when I compare I start thinking that I don't get to go anywhere. And that's a total lie.

I've realized a few things lately:

  • I've gone more places and seen more things than most people
  • I am so lucky and truly blessed to have had so many great opportunities to travel!
  • I have a great wanderlust and will always be seeking out ways to go on another adventure

I've also realized that I often lose sight of how good life is right now because I get so engrossed in how good I think life will be if only I could be in England, say, or Grenada riding bikes with my friend Darryl of Loving the Bike.

In other words - I get stuck living in the future instead of the now


So I've decided that I'm going to start pretending I'm on vacation for at least a moment every day - I'm calling this my Vacation State of Mind Adventure. Or Vacation State Project. Or Vacation State Adventures. Or something like that. I'm on vacation right now so can't bother my mind with such minute details.

My plan is to get into a Vacation State of Mind each day and look at the things around me as though I'm a visitor instead of a person who is anxious to go somewhere else. Sometimes I'll take a picture and post it. Other times I'll note these Vacation State of Mind moments on Facebook, my blog or in my journal. At times I'll share my moments with my family and sometimes I'll just keep them to myself.

I'm not going to stop dreaming of my next vacation. I'm going to keep putting my change in my Italy Box and keep planning for that trip to Italy my family is going to take. But while I'm dreaming and planning and saving I'm going to remember to be happy where I'm at right now.

To note my first Vacation State I took a picture of the beautiful frosty morning that greeted me and my kids as we walked to the bus. We saw the frosty trees around us and said, "Wow! Think of how cool this would look to people who have never seen winter in Minnesota." Then we thought about how lucky we are to live in Minnesota and see the frosty morning ourselves. And we smiled :-)





Comments

Loving the Bike said…
Great post, Myrna...and thanks for mentioning me.

You know what's funny? No matter where you live, I think a part of you always thinks about how it would be somewhere else.

Even here in Grenada where many people call Paradise, I dream about being in other places.


Darryl
March 8, 2013 at 12:28 PM
Joy Riggs said…
I love it, Myrna! What a great idea.
March 8, 2013 at 2:03 PM
Pamela Fagan Hutchins said…
Now that's positive thinking! I love it!
March 13, 2013 at 11:08 PM
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