Lessons in Jet Lag
What receded when I finally set my watch to where the journey of life was taking me
I was that heavy and spacey kind of tired by the time I finally unpacked my suitcase in Crete. I was still adjusting to the time change having only arrived in Europe via Zurich two days before. I was still processing and negotiating the dread and uncertainty of what was starting to unravel at work. Completely unaware, I would come to spend the next four months trapped, right here, in this uneasy and unnerving, but most of all, lonely state of volatility.
Over the summer of 2024, there would be plenty of times that I’d mistake the heaviness I felt for exhaustion. It wasn’t until I stopped resisting what life was asking me to navigate that I found those early traces of inner peace.
Travel during this time was escape and most definitely an attempt to reclaim and restore. After Zurich and Crete, I would visit the Nordics, try to go to Iceland and sunbathe restlessly under the false promise of luxury and comfort at the Ritz-Carlton Reserve’s Zadún in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.
But travel during this time was also strangely telegraphic. There was the question in the Zurich scarf shop and here in Crete there would be more signals begging me to imagine what could come just beyond, too. I would go on to meet the Finnish shopkeeper in Porvoo, Finland, sit next to the young boy and his father on that early morning flight from Stockholm, and even reverse a lifelong disdain for cooked salmon.
All of it was there playing out on the surface and just below. Early questions and collisions presenting themselves, meaning shifting loose, books marshaling my thoughts this way and that. Looking back from a safe distance, I can see all of that now.
Years ago, my old Hollywood boss, Laddie as he was lovingly called, who had done his fair share of travel around the world as a two-time studio chief, used to adamantly and consistently dole out one compound piece of travel advice. Set your watch the moment you get on the plane and no matter what you do never be tempted to run a “but what time is it at home” calculation.
He could be excruciatingly reserved and economical with his words. So when he said this to me on multiple and unprompted occasions, with an atypical conviction and confidence, the twenty-something me knew it should be filed away for the one day me.
I slid it in next to other set-in-stone words to live by: always wear your seatbelt, wash your face before you go to bed and don’t chew with your mouth open. In the decades since I had first heard Laddie’s advice, I’ve proudly pulled it out as my own, saying it to family members, co-workers and friends. And now it seems I’ve curiously rediscovered it here. His words have a comforting agency and decisiveness to them that make me stop and read them over again.
Set your watch the moment you get on the plane and no matter what you do never be tempted to run a “but what time is it at home” calculation.
I was grateful for having decided to start my journey in Crete at the Minos Beach Art Hotel in Mirabello Bay. This was my third trip to Greece overall and I had intentionally steered myself away from island hopping, opting instead to slow down and explore Greece’s largest island more thoroughly.
I would start in Minos Beach on the other side of the bay from Agios Nikolaos, a small harbor town, before winding my way up and around the coast to the antiseptic Kalimera Kriti Hotel and Village Resort, where the sales meeting was to be held. From there, I’d pack up and travel west to Chania before backtracking to my favorite village of the trip, Elounda.
The itinerary as I review it now seems totally and utterly senseless.
Crete ended up being way bigger than I gave it credit for. I remember more than anything spending a lot of time and a lot of money in the car being driven from one hotel to the next. While on one hand I had saved myself the hassle of ferrying from island to island, on the other I had invited a whole new breed of inconvenience in by choosing to bounce like a ping-pong ball from village to village.
All the back and forth, however, was a great way to put eyes on the sweeping beauty of the interior of the island where grapevines, olive and citrus groves and goat and sheep pastures abounded. Mobile service was spotty and the time in transit with nothing much to do between Point A and Point B except stay fully present was refreshingly and addictively cathartic.
I have always found Greece has a way of softening everything: tense shoulders, rough edges and the hard metaphorical lines we come to subconsciously draw in the sand. No waters in the world hold the same healing powers for emotional instability and mental health like the royals, aquas and cobalts of the Aegean Sea. And then, there is the taste of this bountiful country: Greek wine, all the Mediterranean classics a menu can hold and then some, fresh-off-the-boat seafood, olives and olive oil. And all of it together.
Greece never fails to affirm itself as one of the most sacred places on earth.
I was set to give a brand presentation on the opening night of the sales meeting. Usually a very confident presenter, I was riddled with imposter-syndrome-fueled doubts, pre-meeting jitters and angst steeped in futility. I did the best I could in the days before the meeting to clear my head at Minos Beach. The hotel grounds were peaceful and spread out around the sea with lots of nooks from which to read a book, sip a glass of wine and disconnect and daydream.
I was finishing The Untethered Soul I had started in Zurich. Sitting poolside with the book in hand and a lunch tray on my lap, I broke up the words of Michael A. Singer with fresh, big bites of my crunchy Greek salad. I remember thinking I could get used to this untethering concept so long as it landed me somewhere like right here.
My mind would obsessively drift to the meeting ahead. I still couldn’t help but feel there might be something I could say up on that stage to convince the room and the handful of skeptics in it that this brand more than any other deserved a brand leader and a passionate, committed storyteller. But it was a fool’s errand. The presentation and the meeting came and went.
I may not have found the magic words but I did find two magical restaurants, making for two of the most magical meals I would come to have while traveling with my teammates.
It was this, this version of me, all along who rose to meet my potential. I see that now. I never felt like an imposter when I watched my teammates sit down for a dinner I had so carefully and enthusiastically picked out and planned.
Our first night at the hotel, I took one sniff of its all-inclusive dinner buffet and knew I had a job to do. I gathered a crew of co-workers who would be game. We traveled party-bus-style up to San Giorgio. From the restaurant’s patio, we feasted on wine, small plates, big plates and the pleasure of each other’s company. It was a quintessential Greek dinner under the stars. It is not lost on me, either, that one character and one calling sat at the center of it all. Taste.
On the last day of the meeting, lightning struck again. I found Paliria. Our group dined al fresco at the edge of the bright blue water, enjoying one last big Greek banquet together. As it turned out, it was the last time I would ever have one of those epic team meals. And it was absolutely perfect.
After my teammates went home, I took in more of the island on my own. I had more delicious run-ins with taste: a sensational early dinner at Salis in Chania’s Venetian Port and more fresh seafood served beachside or along the coast. There were also unexpected encounters that I still think about to this day with shopkeepers, drivers and servers.
During a time of my life when the career and the identity I scraped from it were coming unmoored, I am grateful I can look back today and process those four months in 2024 for what they were. Denial, resistance, growing pains and above all, good old-fashioned jetlag.
When I started looking forward and out ahead and stopped trying so hard to keep things as they were, when I finally decided to set my watch to where the journey of life was really taking me, the volatility and heaviness receded.
And the untethering began.
