I'm a terrible traveler.
I mean, really, really bad.
You know how Sheldon Cooper (a la The Big Bang Theory) gets when his schedule is out of whack? I too am all but obsessing over my bathroom schedule, breakfast routine, and whether I should just give up any hope of control and play bongos for the rest of my life.
So when I travel, I can especially be a little crazy.
This past weekend my husband and I had a wonderful trip to The Beautiful City for a press trip (unnamed for editorial reasons). We were treated to a beautiful room, amazing food, and even a sumptuous spa treatment for an entire weekend.
My complaint?
There was no reading chair for my morning coffee, not enough filtered water to make said coffee, no coffee pot conducive to making MY favorite drip coffee (it was one of those instant thing-a-ma-jigs), and the bed made my back stiff.
And the TV was too high.
And there was no patio or balcony to pad around like there is at our home.
Man, I sounded like a 2-year old.
The room was NOT conducive to my normal routine nor my normal state of comfort, which I have established in my own home. So essentially I was blaming the new experience for being new.
Huh.
Okay, sure, sure, eccentricities and particularities aside, hotels are in the biz of comfort and hospitality. To some extent, if I have a complaint, I'm supposed to make one. And I did, graciously-- that was my job, after all, this weekend, to tell them what I thought. But there's another mentality here for me that runs a whole lot deeper, my traveler's baggage claim, if you will.
I dislike new experiences that require failure, different perspective, and a shifted mentality in order to be appreciated.
I love comfort. I love predictability, schedule, and routine, because thereby I can believe in an imaginary life that progresses along a logical, linear projectory with few pits stops and zero turn-arounds.
Like I said, "imaginary".
As a result of my traveler's discomfort this weekend, I squabbled with my husband, pouted for an entire evening, and hardly slept the second night we were there.
Sweet.
But then something happened.
The next morning, we took some time to figure out what was bothering me so much. Once we got some perspective and shared some belly laughs over my extreme OCD, we relaxed and refocused. We took time to stroll through and experienced a few new restaurants, shops, and parts of town that we heard were interesting. We went in with an open mind, looking to understand and appreciate people and places that weren't part of our normal repertoire of experience. And we had a blast.
We actually came home with ideas of art and architectural trappings that we thought we could use in our [still-developing] house. We tasted some new foods we'd like to try cooking at home.
And best of all, our own house looked a little sweeter when we returned home. I was inspired about new home projects, new writing ideas, and the new people I'd met. Some of the responsibilities Nathan had been shouldering at work and home seemed to shrink a little and he felt better about them, just by getting away for a little while.
When I don't travel, I hate to travel because it means change and adjustment; but when I do travel, I love it, even though it might be after the fact. I love what it does to me; suddenly I'm not [quite] the same comfortable, controlling, OCD person I was (I said "quite"), who was trying to hold her own personal known universe together. Instead, my little universe is expanded in an act of spiritual evolution, bursting beyond my well-established predictable boundaries and into the realm of imagination and experience.
I still pack granola bars, extra bottled water, and my favorite brand of coffee with me when I leave the house. I still love my reading chair, and would gladly strap it to the car whenever we go out of town. But if I forget them, if I can't carry it, that's okay (and seriously, I don't do that--it's just a metaphorical desire). It's my perspective that I want to carry with me, and then release, when I travel, waiting for it to grow, and yes, to change.
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