Too much adventure
When the senses need a break
Photo by Erol Ahmed on Unsplash
Like so many Americans, I am traveling this summer, making up for years of summers past without a proper vacation thanks to the pandemic. For the first time in years, we took a full two week vacation. We stayed with friends in Paris and wandered the neighborhood I used to live in, passing my favorite restaurants, happy hour spots, and vintage shops. We fought jet lag alongside the canal, and then along the Seine, and joined other families at the park while children scrambled up playgrounds and pushed through exhaustion, only to crash on the way home.
From there, we flew to one of the Greek islands for my sister’s wedding and made a family reunion of it. We piled into rental homes and played cards, watched each other’s kids, watched movies, cooked together, shared sunscreen and after-sun gel, bickered, hugged, passed our books along to each other as soon as we finished them, napped in the sun, napped in the shade, and relaxed.
Then it was off to Athens, where the heat melted us all day and we learned to take refuge inside during peak afternoon hours, blasting the AC in our rental apartment and showering in the middle of the day to scrub the sweat off. In Athens, we visited the Acropolis, hordes of tourists up early, unprepared for the uphill climb on slippery stone, grumbling beneath the fiery sun, trying to get the perfect selfie or just not lose their tour guide. Our rental apartment was centrally located, which also meant that we were frequently surrounded by tourists in a way that began to feel exhausting. We found quiet moments of everyday life in a playground popular among Athenian summer camps, and a neighborhood restaurant just far enough off the metro to keep the crowds at bay. We were still tourists, of course, bumbling our way in Greek, sending postcards, staring hard at maps and street names, but we found comfort in scratching at least a little bit past the surface of Athen’s greatest hits into something closer to normalcy.
Street art in Anafiotika
Although I’d been waiting for this trip for years, by the third week I had grown weary of all the excitement. I had grown tired of eating out. Tired of coordinating among the group and planning what to do next — who had a data plan and could navigate us where? Who would we meet later for dinner, and did someone in that group have international text messaging? Tired of negotiating with my son over nap time, of hoisting him into my arms when he was too tired to walk because we’d ventured further afield than expected.
I was ready for a change of pace. I wanted to veg out. To be on autopilot. To get back to a routine with all the little pleasures I’d forgotten about. I wanted a pause in the adventure. The senses needed a break.
By the time we arrived in Madrid, our group’s numbers had dwindled, and I was relieved to be some place I didn’t have to be a tourist; it was my third trip to the city and I’d seen many of the top tourist spots before. More importantly, we’d be staying for nearly a month, in a house swap in a neighborhood not likely to make it into the guidebooks but with much to offer the local community. Our son would be attending a local summer camp and we would be working remotely. As soon as we set our bags down I thought, “Oh, I am so excited to get back into a routine again.”
Routines can be dull when they’re all we’ve got — repetitive and uninspiring, sometimes even stifling. But boy, can they also be comforting. We don’t have to think about where we’re going to go out to eat, because we’ve already got our favorite takeout place on speed dial. We don’t need to look up the best directions to get somewhere, or how long it will take, because we’ve already memorized the bus schedule and know more about Sunday subway service than Google maps can ever know. We don’t have to negotiate what happens next with our kids because they already know that after lunch it’s straight to quiet time. We don’t have to feel guilty about not seeing more of a new city — because we live there and know our favorite bits and pieces already, and we have time to explore the rest. Routines can release us from feeling like we have to see or do it all. Routines — especially ones that include time for breaks — can be restful.
As I’ve written before:
Routines are wonderful: they help you do things more efficiently, thereby giving you time back for the things that matter most. They are predictable, and create a sense of stability in an otherwise often uncertain life. It can be comforting to know what comes next (just ask any toddler).
Everyone’s tolerance for adventure and newness is different. (My son is all, “When are we going on the next plane? Tomorrow? Let’s go tomorrow!”) But there comes a point for each of us where a little bit of routine, familiarity, repetition offers a welcome break, and becomes a form of rest.
What do you do when you’re craving routine? How do you find moments of rest when you’re on the road or adventuring?
- ✈️ Airport reads: Traveling always makes me want to try something new, so I picked up a few books outside of my normal genre at the airport. I zipped through Ready Player One and just finished Station Eleven and have found them both to be gripping in different ways. (I am years late, I know; I hadn’t read either of them, or watched the adaptations!) I’m looking forward to checking out the adaptations next. It’s often at least a little bit unsatisfying but always intriguing to see what makes the cut once a book is adapted to screen form.
- 🎧 Skipping the audio: One thing I am doing differently while on vacation is listening to books and podcasts a lot less. I’ve started and stopped at least three audiobooks so far on this trip, with my apologies to the authors, who simply can’t compete with my surroundings. There’s something to be said for observing a new place with eyes and ears wide open.
- 🗞️ We have a new tagline! Every few months, I go into a brainstorming fit and think I’m going to rebrand this newsletter. And every few months, I come up empty-handed. (Naming is hard!) What I’ve settled on (for now? forever?) is updating the tagline to this newsletter to better reflect what it’s all about. Letters from Ximena is not just a newsletter about personal growth and human behavior (my old tagline). It’s about staying curious, getting creative, and living well. It’s a small change but a meaningful one, and I’m excited to dig into these topics more deeply in future editions. Thanks to everyone who weighed in when I was in brainstorming mode. If you feel so moved, you can share what this newsletter means to you or what topics you’re most excited about in the comments.
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- 🎫 I’m going on book tour! I’ll be talking about my upcoming book, Rest Easy, and all the many ways we can find rest in our busy lives, and it will be fun and inspiring and energizing. You can book me for an event by contacting me or my speaking agent. Not in a position to book me, but know an organization who might be interested? Feel free to share this with them, too.
💌 Thanks as always for reading along and supporting my work. If you like what you see, hit the heart button, drop a comment, or share this with someone you think will love it, too. 💌
