Black Sheep Diner

Sometimes you touch down and immediately know "I'm not going to like it here". I don't really think that it's the fault of the place you have just arrived even though it hardly seems like you could have prepared any differently. Maybe we can blame the arrangement of stars. On this trip, I realized that my heart was already too full to open up to something new. I had unresolved things at home and I wasn't ready to be leaving. And yet, sometimes leaving is what you need to break the cycle of overthinking, gain some perspective, and move into the action phase.

Traveling is a lonely business. Travelling alone is a very lonely business. I guess that's redundant. It's just that I'm tired of talking to myself.

Never do I appreciate the problem solving resources that the roots that I've put down at home give to me as much as during that first inevitable obstacle on a trip. On a good trip, that first obstacle is honestly "what do I eat" after the airplane, the car or dehydration--or all three--have jumbled my insides. Comfort food? Vegetables? The regional specialty?

Never do I feel more accomplished as an independent woman than when something goes terribly wrong in my trips and I have to come up with my own resourceful solution out of the tools that I packed for myself before my time is up and I need to board the airplane again.  However, at the end of every trip, I sense just how much my independence is in fact a privilege best complimented by strong and healthy interdependence. My community that I've put roots into makes it possible for me to go out and come home.

It takes these funny sales trips for me to see that everything that I'm worried about is going to be ok because my husband, myself, and my community have so many more tools and skills to solve the problems that confront us than we give ourselves credit for. "It will work out" becomes the mantra that I reach for rather than the previous question of "am I doing enough?".

 

XOXO from Springfield, MO