Part 1: Scared Shitless

In less than a week, I will be in a place I’ve never been before, with people I’ve never met before. For a month. This is both terrifying and exhilarating.

At the end of 2018, for the first time in my life, I did a vision board. I gave some thought to what I wanted out of this year and for the first time ever, set attainable goals, some of which I’ve actually achieved (this is quite shocking to me). Travel is an important part of my life, a priority if you will, even more so than my financial stability and retirement but more on that in another post on another day. At the end of the year (2018) I looked back on where I travelled over the past 6 years and examined those lonely / empty feelings that started popping up on the last couple of trips and decided on 3 rules for traveling this year:

1. There had to be a purpose beyond going to see a new place and getting out of Trinidad for a bit.

2. I couldn’t be alone for the entire trip. A pause on solo traveling.

3. I had to go to new places. No repeat / comfort trips.

So here we are, 5 months in on this no longer new year and 5 days away from Bali, Indonesia to join a group of 20 strangers and live life Unsettled. Even though I’ve read every email, read all the comments, all the notes, I have no clue what to expect and I’m actually terrified of having expectations, because what if I’m disappointed, what if I wasted all this money and time and have the worst trip of my life? What if with all my self-imposed rules, I still feel lonely and empty? What if I hate all 20 people? What if my bed is uncomfortable? What if Balinese people are racist? What if I get sick? What if I have the best time of my life? What then?

As I go to bed, after finishing up some last minute client work, with a lot more last minute client work to do in the next 2 days, it’s a welcome distraction from thinking about what my reality would be soon. It’s also a little bit of purpose. People keep asking me if I’m excited and my answer is usually “not till I get on the plane” and honestly, their excitement makes me feel guilty for not experiencing this emotion that seems to go naturally with this occurrence but here we are.

I will blog weekly about the trip, because nothing irks me more than having to talk about my trip over and over when I return home. Once something is over, I’m not one to reminisce or talk about it. It happened, it’s over, onward. I think this is largely because people always seem to be more excited than I am and again the guilt over not showing the right emotion at the right time is just too uncomfortable. So hopefully this will help answer all the Unsettled questions and eliminate some of the inevitable small talk.

That’s all the raw thoughts for now. Stay tuned.

Here’s more on Unsettled.