COLLISION 00019
I was still getting my feet under me as The Untethered Traveler when I set off for Poland and the Baltics last summer. In many ways, I was still apologizing to and perhaps even punishing myself for being myself, for having made a decision to go out on my own as a writer.
2025’s Polish-Baltic itinerary was the first one where I would be intentionally traveling without the promise and emotional safety net of either a traditional career or a traditional career path laid out in front of me. While I sensed pure and unfamiliar liberation approaching, I also felt the deepest shades of doubt and sabotage advancing.
I found myself wading through agonizing waves of vulnerability just adjusting to the idea of life away from home without a separate, distinct identity to claim me when I got back.
Reflecting on my journey now, a year later, I appreciate I was learning inside those very moments what it meant, what it felt like to actually untether.
Far away from the comfort zones of home and routine, I was experiencing all the growing pains and uncertainty that came with massive change, transition and I believe, metamorphosis. I wasn’t even trading out grippy prolegs for paper-thin wings either. I was simply shedding layers upon layers of cloaks I’d piled on to protect against the wrong weather system entirely.
I was through the worst of the volatility when I arrived in Tallinn, Estonia. Now two weeks into the trip, I had already managed the worst of the molt in Krakow, Wroclaw, Warsaw and Vilnius, Lithuania. I could feel myself starting to relax into a rhythm of discovery. I could feel something shift as intermittent waves of empowerment now started to wash over me.
Somewhere along the way, I was greeted by fresh and energizing optimism. I even recognized a heightened awareness and creativity creeping into my movement and my work. Maybe I was starting to understand how clinging to the sure bet had only meant I was standing on the same confining patch of solid ground. Maybe I was ready to finally flutter up those wings.
It was about this time in my journey of self-reappraisal that I met Risto, my server at the so-worth-the-hype Restaurant Rataskaevu 16 in Tallinn’s old town. He had a lively wit to him. One that made me believe I could trust his impassioned recos without hesitation.
He, in turn, trusted my bold choice to order my own bottle of Txakolina, a white Basque wine I had fallen in love with in San Sebastián earlier that year. My ambitious drink order, a bit indulgent even by my own standards, inspired us to pause the transactional side of placing a lunch order, so we could chat human-to-human.
Not surprisingly, we talked about travel. Where he wanted to go, what he wanted to see one day. We talked about my love for San Sebastián, my solo self-led travels and my reassurance that I really wasn’t going to drink that whole bottle at lunch alone. I really was going to carry it back to my hotel to finish at some point during the rest of my stay.
I honestly don’t know if he believed me, but I lived up to my word. I tried to drink the rest of the room-temperature, flat Txakolina the next day. Praising myself for the discipline to stop short, but cursing myself for thinking it might be even remotely crisp or delicious.
After I paid the bill, Risto brought me a receipt with a handwritten message scribbled across the top. “Thanks for visiting,” it started. “I just love how you know how to enjoy life.”
It may not seem like much, but at the time it was everything.
“I’ve got this,” I suddenly thought.
“This is who I really am.”
And with the tiniest of flutters, I put distance between who I was and who I was intended to be. I floated up and up until I saw the ground below me.
