Back to Life On The Road
Every year I tell myself that I’m going to travel less, and yet somehow I look at my calendar and someone has booked it full of flights, hotels, and different locations. I don’t know for sure that I will truly ever stop traveling, but the reality is the traveling aspect is the part I hate the most. I enjoy BEING in different locations, but the travel is a whole other story.
That being said, my friend Aroha and I are going to be driving across Canada from London, ON to Salmon Arm, BC and meeting up with creative and glorious folks along the way. I am super excited about this because I’ve wanted to do a Confidence Across Canada tour for a long time now and finally we decided to make it happen….it just happened to coincide with all the other things that I wanted to do this year.
Life on the road is not for the faint of heart. You get random pillows and beds (which get more and more uncomfortable as you age), food is a shitshow (this is gonna be fun with my new way of eating), and when you drive across the prairies it’s literally just one big flat canola field. However, the key to enjoying the travel aspect is to consider it the destination. This is very much like life, ya know? You don’t want to zip through the journey just to get to the end.
For me, I started to remind myself that the travel aspect IS the destination, is the purpose, is the point. Yesterday I read something about “Instead of ‘What do you want to do WITH your life’, we should be asking ‘What do you want to do WITHIN your life?’” and that made me think of life on the road. What do I want to accomplish within the drive, within the travel, within the journey?
So, I made a list:
-jam out to a playlist like I’m in the car scene of a movie
-attend a Hanson concert in Winnipeg (10 year old me is excited)
-take pictures at all the different touristy trap things with my polaroid camera
-put my feet in a stream
-take self portraits at random and beautiful locations
-do Universe Decides along the way
-record my podcast with Aroha while we are on the road
-document EVERYTHING
-write every day about what I am seeing, experiencing, thinking (lucky you!)
-meet up with folks who want to meet up with us (follow my insta stories to see if I zip through your city, I will post where we will be stopping: @terihofford )
-see wild animals (not IN the road I hope)
-enjoy have deep conversations with my friend
-be naked in a forest
These are just a few for now, but I will keep building this list.
As an achiever, I’m used to being destination oriented, so this practice in enjoying the process/journey/roadtrip is difficult, but necessary to help me slow down my life in business as well as in travel.
Ps. if there’s anything you’d like to see me do/see/experience on this trip, feel free to let me know in the comments below!
