I’ve started travelling again

And it’s not a post COVID thing, it’s a post being a single mum of a child thing.

You see now that my son has been through the tortured last year of finishing school, where he and his mates somehow seem too old to be subjected to the childish rules that schools can implement (no hair touching collars, no hair fades, no room to be an individual) while seemingly being too young to be ready to launch into the world unsupervised, we somehow made it through the final exams and he is submerged in the semi safety of uni, and I am free.

The combination of COVID restrictions being a distant memory at the same time school regimes have also been swiped from my routine, is quite intoxicating. The sense of freedom is liberating. I’ve stopped setting an alarm clock and am determined to live on “my time”. Unfortunately, my rescue kitten and my old darling dog are not wavering on their 5.30am starts to the day – so my mornings are not quite “my time”, however I have learnt the joy of second sleeps and starting the day with coffee in bed. I call this my “research time” (self-justification at its best!) and avidly add destinations to my wish list of destinations I must visit … from our incredible Australian outback to the Northern lights in Norway, from the ancient cities of Morocco to the beaches of Thailand, there is a world to explore. The list is long – but why shouldn’t it be?

So, armed with this new freedom, and with work being undertaken remotely now more than ever, I have started booking travel back into my life. Little trips at first. Last weekend was a trip to Sydney for Vivid with two nights at the Shangri-La and a handful of restaurant bookings that I had been dying to try. Well, it seems after all these years I have lost my knack for packing. And my patience for overcrowded elevators (possibly a COVID hangover there). However, I have not lost my appetite for new experiences, for exploring the wonder of museums and galleries, for cocktail drinking and indulgent degustations …

The reality is that now we are “back to normal”, it is easy to get locked into our former routines; of overworking, of denying ourselves the very things that make the working worthwhile. We all learnt in COVID to nurture our homes, our gardens, our family units. We longed for the time when we could travel and explore again. And we all need the reminder that the time has finally come, where we can explore and travel and make time for the important things. We can carry everything that we have learnt with us – to make sustainable choices, to care for each other, to care for the planet and to appreciate the incredible opportunities in life.

We are all getting older, but we can also get wiser about how we seek our new work life balance, or maybe even our retirement plans. It’s so important that we take the opportunity to reset the path we may have been following, to remember all those promises we made to ourselves in lockdown and get out and enjoy all that life has to offer! Life is precious, and for many it’s over way too soon.

So, plan to get away, plan to see your friends and family, plan for a life you dream of, and make it happen. We just don’t know what is around the corner, waiting to be discovered. Or lost. There’s no time like the present.

Until next month,

Abby x •