Planning My Travels

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Letting Go of Control for the Benefit of Travel

I have been reflecting a lot recently on how much that I have changed in the months that I have moved to France. And one of those changes is that I am becoming less and less of a planner. We'll see if this change is permanent when I get back to teaching. But for now, all I can say is that I no longer spend more than an hour when planning my travels. Here's why:


A list feels like a challenge, and I hate failing. I don't know if people realize how competitive I am. But only on certain matters. I quit track three times, so clearly I'm not competitive in that area. But tell me I can't do something and I will try my hardest to prove you wrong. So when I look at a list of places to go, I turn it into a challenge. I have to see everything on my list otherwise I failed. And then I realized that I wasn't fully appreciating what I was seeing because I was rushing around trying to finish my list. So instead I look for a couple of focus points and appreciate what I am seeing in the moment.

Neuschwanstein Castle

I'm a pessimistic optimist. When I research, I build up this image in my mind of what its going to be like. And sometimes, not every time, I get to a city with an image in my head that is not what I was expecting. So I guess I stopped getting too obsessive with my research to not set my hopes to high. That sounds bad, I'm not saying cities disappoint me, I just have a bad habit of building things up a little too much. I guess what I am saying is I would rather be pleasantly surprised than disappointed. Hence why I am a pessimistic optimist.

If I miss something, its just one more reason to return. I believe that you can never fully see everything in a city, so if I didn't know about something, then its just one more reason to return. I think that I would return to every city that I have visited so far, there's always more to see. So instead I just say that I'll come back again one day.