A Different Kind of Departure
This week I determined it was finally time to start traveling again. On one hand I’m amazed I waited it out as long as I did. And on the other hand, I’m not the least bit surprised I needed three whole months to sort out both when it felt right to head back out and where it felt intentional to go and grow.
Over these last few months I have been, what can best be described as overly precautious and unusually precious about my future travel plans. And that’s not because I have been held back by the typical travel inertia – timidity, indecisiveness or self-inflicted roadblock. It is because for the first time in a long time, quite possibly ever, I realized I was traveling toward something not away from something.
In my blog post To Travel with Purpose, I said then and I believe today that life had me in motion for no other reason than to stop me in my tracks. As an avid traveler there was a time in my life not so long ago that this edict would have been insufferable grounding. But in a season laden with so much change and soul searching, it was a powerful and perfectly timed wake-up call.
For the same reasons I believe in answering the call of travel, I believe in answering the call to be still - even if that means boorishly staying put at home. And so I did, with no regret, deep gratitude and a renewed sense of vitality. It was as if the moment I got back from my last trip, something broke free. I was suddenly, simply ready. Not ready to jet off again, ready to invest the time, energy, resources and soul into self-realization. I was overcome by an intoxicating sense of urgency to not just visualize but accept the calling of the future in front of me.
I established rigorous but invigorating routines. I propped up a disciplined framework from which to slow life down just enough to establish a rhythm to write, to build The Untethered Traveler’s strategic foundation, and to practice healthy, clean habits for mind, body and soul. I feverishly committed to embracing and activating only those activities that brought me closer to the purpose intentional travel had revealed. I was obsessed. I am still obsessed. I became blissfully consumed by the work, the words and the world that I’d been reborn into.
And so I gave myself the space and permission I needed to create while I waited like a loyal servant for travel’s call. I filled up the days, which turned into weeks and then months, working, building and learning or in this new creator’s world - making messes, getting vulnerable and eating humble pie. Occasionally a distant pang of “look here or there” would needle me…Greece? Oaxaca? Tbilisi? the Dutch countryside? Finally travel’s call to adventure coalesced around months of fateful nudges from the unlikeliest of random places - the irreverent motorbike adventures of none other than Ewan McGregor, my iPhone Academy classes and the opportunity to cluster a variety of desirable destinations under one efficient trip itinerary.
“And so I gave myself the space and permission I needed to create while I waited like a loyal servant for travel’s call.”
Life was leading me it seemed to Poland and the three beautiful, bountiful countries of The Baltics. This trip would be my first out in the wild as the founder of my own brand – my own travel brand. If that wasn’t reason enough to be precious about where my feet first landed, I was also adapting to the great, sprawling unknown of leaving behind a safer, more certain career path as a CMO. Poland and the Baltics would essentially be my first stop in a career detour that was now at my own pressing euphorically sliding off the rails of convention. Truth be told, it was such a refreshing and much needed sidestep. For far too long, I’d been clinging too dutifully to animating my work ethic, experience and potential in ways that weren’t serving me or the world around me.
And yet, I’m heading out next month, scared but unstoppable, fearful but faithful, doubting but determined. I don’t know exactly what I’ll discover over these three weeks in Eastern Europe, but I do know it will be as meaningful a journey in becoming as I allow it to be. At least for now, I am the sovereign author and architect of this story. And I’ve already written in a consummate supporting star - Warsaw, nicknamed the Phoenix City - who will be one of many to play witness to my comeback – my biggest, riskiest and most exhilarating life pivot ever.
All of this reinforces for me how important it is to identify our WHY before we ever leave home – before we hit click to buy on that ticket. I’m traveling this August to refill my creative cup not because it is empty but because I’m hungry for more stories, more color and more taste from a different corner of this world. Knowing that and all the other mitigating factors circling around it, this itinerary versus say a “Return-Again” one made the most sense for me. Because I know what I need and am hyper-conscious of what I seek, it becomes a matter of matching that up then against literally a world full of possibilities.
Of course not everyone travels for the same reasons. Some may travel to seek momentum, others to seek stillness and some may just want to seek temporary reprieve from mounting responsibilities, pressure and captivity. I’ve seen travel open up taste buds, quiet loud disgruntled voices, resurrect joy in bouts of grief, inspire poignant generosity, and rouse independence in the most apprehensive of hearts.
But I don’t want to overplay travel’s hand here anymore than I want to undersell the role each one of us plays in mining the transformative power of travel. Travel is but a stage, an access point, an enabler. Travel is a sanctuary. Travel is a muse. Travel is a mirror. In all of these instances, there is but one common, critical ingredient – our agency. And for this reason, travel can only meet us where we are – as we are. I believe if called upon as a tool, a companion or a salve, travel can illuminate a missing dimension to self-discovery, self-empowerment and interconnectedness. All we have to do is embrace moving with more soul and meaning at own pace, on own budget and most of all behind our own taste. We need to untether.
“I believe if called upon as a tool, a companion or a salve, travel can illuminate a missing dimension to self-discovery, self-empowerment and interconnectedness. ”
How we travel today isn’t how we will show up for travel in the future. As our values, mindset, motivations and taste evolve so do our travel profiles – and I’m not talking about the ones that sum up our preferences behind - window seat, air conditioning, vegetarian… I’m talking about the ones that explore the deeper truths about how each one of us moves through the world. The ones that reveal what we seek, what drives us, and what kind of traveler we’re becoming. What we do with this self-awareness, this mini-awakening can bring truly profound, eye-opening intention to how we travel.
What often starts off small as a spark, a craving, or a nearly indiscernible voice from within, ends up triggering this beautiful avalanche of momentum inside of us. Before we know it, the inertia of stillness that had us fixed in place both literally and figuratively has been converted into the palpable, liberating realization that the growth we seek begins and ends with movement.
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Every week, I send one new Tessera—on taste, travel, and the truths we collect along the way. If this piece resonated, I’d be honored if you’d share or subscribe from the home page.
