How Your Blog Can Help Keep You Sane

Posted by Mike Richard on October 15, 2006
Filed under: Pre-Trip

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I’ve gone through many phases in this run-up to our RTW trip. It’s truly been about 8-10 years in the making. Or at least that’s how much time I’ve spent thinking about it in one capacity or another. It’s always seemed out of reach though - even now, we’re almost 18 months off. I’m sure that time will fly by, but in the meantime I’m left wondering what the hell to fill my thoughts with?

I’ve always seemed to mentally sway back and forth between two extremes. The first is thinking about nothing but our trip. And that gets tiring very quickly. The mounting, daily anxiety of wanting to just hop a plane tomorrow and never look back surely will drive me mad if left unchecked over the course of eighteen months. So that’s not a healthy option.

The other extreme is saying to myself, “Listen, self: money’s the only way to make that trip a reality. So get to work, head down, and work your sixty hours a week so we can get the hell out of here ASAP.” This has proven all but impossible as well. I’ve given up quite a bit - I’m dining out less, saving every last stinkin’ dime I stumble across, and working whatever overtime I can. Alas, there’s truth in a tired cliché: all work and no play makes Jack Mike a dull boy.

But I’ve finally found a happy medium, mainly thanks to this blog. It’s been a great outlet towards expressing my hopes and dreams about the upcoming trip. It’s a way to take my mind off of it via “brain dump”. Every time I have a thought that would otherwise just cloud my head with all of the other tips, ideas, plans, to-do’s, etc. I just jot it down here. Plus, I’m (hopefully) helping other like-minded folks in the meantime.

Bottom line: if you’re driving yourself nuts thinking about your next oh-so-far-away travel, write about it. Blogs are free and you don’t have to be Oscar Wilde to spout out interesting prose. Look at me!

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Vagabondish editor, Mike Richard, lives in Rhode Island - a spit of land in the northeastern U.S. He is a professional web designer and travel junkie with an unhealthy addiction to backpacking, camping, hiking and seeing the world. He enjoys knit hats, small, declarative sentences and speaking in the third person.



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Comments

Funchilde
October 15th, 2006 - 3:49 pm

Hey! I stumbled over from Bootsnall to wish you guys happy planning and congrats on setting such an awesome goal! You will oscillate b/w these two extremes until the weeks before your trip and then you’ll wonder where the hell all the time went. Don’t skimp out on living life now by not treating yourself to some fun over the course of your savings/planning time, otherwise your trip becomes more of an escape than a dream. I look forward to seeing what happens next here at vagabondish!