Micro Me Moments

As I said in a previous post, I grew up in a huge family. There was no such thing as an empty house or quietness, and I remember craving it. In my room at one of our houses, I had access to the attic's eves. I cleared one out and turned it into my hideaway. Some of my favorite time living there was hiding out and reading in there.  

Then I headed to boarding school, followed by college and grad school, and a marriage. I lived alone for a while in grad school, but that was it. I either had roommates or lived with a boyfriend/partner for the next 15+ years.

It wasn't until moving to Belgium that I rediscover my love of solo time. The adjustment was painful and lonely as I learned to spend time with just me. But once I was over that hurdle, it felt like a warm, comforting bath. During crazy parts of the season or when I'm traveling with the team, it's hard to find solo time. Every meal is eaten as a group, and you work from basically sun up to sun down. When I'm home in Belgium, it's super easy to find me time; that's just called my normal.

But when I'm on the road, it isn't nearly as simple, but this week while in Atlanta, I've focused on finding quiet, me time. It's still been full work but finding micro me moments has allowed me to appreciate the shift between the extreme solo times (Belgium) and intense group living weeks (work) with ease.

Calling It

This is a lazy post.

It was a good day, but a long day. I woke up slightly before 5am and I wasn't too excited about it. I didn't have my suitcase, so I couldn't put on clean clothes, work out or do much. Instead, I got to put on the still damp, a bit stinky clothes I'd worn the day before, sink washed in hotel shampoo and hung over the air conditioner in an attempt to dry. It was underwhelming at best.

It's now a quarter to 10pm and I'm crawling into bed. I would say from a work perspective, I worked full gas for a solid five hours and then off and on for the next seven hours, so plenty was done. But I also felt like I was able to decompress and be normal. I went outside, went to shops, spent more money than I should, got excited by all the options and choices and then got overwhelmed by American. It's way too easy to spend money here.

Now it's time to snooze and hopefully wake up sometime after 5am. Maybe I won't be the first person at breakfast waiting for them to put the coffee out at 6:30am. At least it was a damn good hotel buffet breakfast.

A girl can dream....

Continuous Motion

I come from a big family, and we traveled a pretty impressive amount for our large numbers. When I was little, we owned a Volkswagen bus that my dad had taken the benches, rotated them 90 degrees and bolted back so they lined the sides and faced each other. The VW symbol was flipped upside down.

We went to the Outer Banks in North Carolina frequently and once a year did a trip to Florida, typically to Disney World. Once the first minivan came out, our trips got upgraded and we hit the Florida Keys and did ski trips. I also got to ride the train and do at least an annual trip to Washington DC or New York City. This sense of wanderlust was ingrained in me early. I remember one thing that I really loved the most was when we’d travel far enough that the weather shifted or that the trees/scenario changed.  I loved trying new foods and remember my first tastes of raw oysters on the half shell, sea conch soup, a real Ruben sandwich, and on and on.

I started working around 16 and saved my money and started going on solo trips. I do appreciate that my parents let me fly, take the car or ride a train solo throughout high school. As long as I checked in, paid for it myself and didn’t have any problems, I was allowed to keep doing these trips.

When I reached college and needed to pick a career, I knew I loved to travel. I tried to come up with a career where someone else would pay for me to travel the world. I wanted to see it all. So Political Science with a concentration in International Relations seemed the most likely. During college, I got to study abroad in France and did a humanitarian trip to Honduras. Immediately following graduation, I headed to Europe and backpacked for three months and went to 15 countries. My wanderlust has only grown and spread since then.

When I take a moment to slow down and appreciate my life, I feel so spoiled. I live in Belgium. Last week, I spent part of it in Italy, and now I’m on a plane to the US for a few days. It never gets old. Even returning to the same races or same places doesn’t feel redundant. I get excited about a little reflection of familiarity that’s mixed in with the hope of a new restaurant or adventure.

One day this will all slow down, and I want to be a place that I embrace that when it happens. Until then, I’m going to go big and always say yes to the extra glass of local dessert Sicilian wine that the waiter tells me I must try or extend one of my work travels by a day or two (which rarely happens but I aim to do it when I can!) to wander around and explore. More is more.

My Birthday. At Work

Ever since leaving for Hawaii over three weeks ago, life hasn't slowed down. I've gone through some big changes at work, which have meant a huge increase in work load. That should all quiet down now, but these past few weeks have been intense. After the Dominican Republic home build, I spent about a week in Stone Mountain, GA. During that time, I celebrated my 36th birthday.

As a kid, I was a huge birthday person. I think this is part of being a December birthday. No one wants to celebrate your birthday. It's another gift, another event, just another something during a crazy month. That was a huge frustration as a child. My birthday always felt like a chore and like all little kids, I wanted to be celebrated and spoiled with gifts, cakes and parties.  

As an adult, I get it. I have so much going on, I barely want to celebrate my birthday. If I could, I would probably let everyone forget it, especially when surrounded exclusively by coworkers. The last time I spent my birthday at training camp was four years ago and it actually was my first day working for the team. That meant I wasn't friends with anyone on social media and no one really knew me. I skated through without a single happy birthday and that was fine.

My birthday fell on one of the busiest days of training camp (media training) and was two days before maybe my biggest day of the year (media day/team presentation).  I wanted to cruise through the day without anyone mentioning it, but thanks to Facebook reminders, everyone knew. And after living, working and traveling together so closely for this many years, no one was letting me skate by.

And they did a great job spoiling me: I received a cake, tiara, flowers, balloons and a great meal out. I felt loved and celebrated. A few special people lead the charge and made sure I felt spoiled all day long. It was nice. And when you work with so many Italians, you realize all those great birthday kisses aren't such a bad thing.