I started this blog at the end of 2012 after amazing trips to Easter Island and Africa.  Each year, I try to summarize my year in travel blogging (Year 1 Update, Year 2 Update) –the highs, the lows, a bit of sappy and the lessons learned along the way.  2015 has been quite eventful if you’ve been following along, if not, time to catch up! Here’s my third year of blogging –

Losing Control

There comes a point in travel when you throw your arms up, wave the white flag of surrender and learn to feed your feelings with wine or chocolate (or both).  This is the day that you realize despite the finely tuned itinerary, you have absolutely no control over your travels.  Sure, you planned every minute of it – that much you can control – but once you leave your house with packed bags all bets are off.  There are weather delays, traffic snarls, taxi strikes, missed connections and a host of other scenarios that affect your travel.  How you deal with the travel madness can make or break your vacation and/or relationships. Meltdowns will happen! This uncertainty has resulted in my bag of snacks, a folder of alternative travel scenarios and learning to compromise.

For my third year of blogging, control or lack of control seemed to swirl around me from the get go both in my travels, my professional life and my life in general.  Upending my entire universe wasn’t on my resolution list last year, it wasn’t on my five year plan nor was it in my sightline.  I was happily ignorant in the life I had. In 2015, I was blindsided and yet at the end of the year, I can see how this loss of control has allowed me to stand back and discover so much more about the world and myself.

Starting in January, I trekked to the New York Travel Show to learn about new trends, new destinations and meet other travel industry professionals.  I decided my travel plans for 2015 would finally include The Galapagos (solo friendly vendor) and a surprise Mother’s Day trip to Ireland and London for my mom in business class using my British Airways Travel Together Voucher (essentially a buy one ticket with Avios get one free).  I was super excited to plan these two key milestone trips, having saved for a while.  But then my job was moved overseas (without me) and suddenly my world had exploded without a backup scenario.  Travel is easy to fix……Life is a different story…..

There Will Be A Gap

Having surveyed my job prospects (or lack thereof), I decided this was the best time to take a few months off to travel.  While many questioned my sanity, questioned my finances, questioned how I would explain the gap (note U.S. folks don’t quite appreciate travel gaps, while the rest of the world embraces them – we really need to appreciate the value of travel!) – I knew it was what was best for me to mourn the job loss and try to find out what my next move would be.  I had no idea when I left in April on my travel sabbatical that I would return in July with a fractured foot, no idea the role the small island of Gozo would play in changing my life, no idea that it would take many months to look for a new job.  I’d have a love affair with travel again – wandering freely without a care in the world, questioning life and my place in the world, indulging without worrying about calories all while trying to formulate how I wanted my next chapter to begin.

Trying the New Foods

Tough questions, but first lots of food (and thankfully no scales to compare before and after).  I would just indulge….

Working out every day before leaving on my travel sabbatical, I would cede gym time to my pension for walking everywhere (until I couldn’t walk anymore figuratively then literally).  I rediscovered the flavors of the city and country drinking Cava in Spain, literally Devoured Barcelona, sampled the wines and gelato of Florence and attended Expo15 in Milan, a world showcase of food.  My Italian tour guide would ply me with plates of food to taste and chide me if I didn’t at least try something new.

It’s “Groundhog Day” Everyday

What they don’t tell you about being unemployed it that it’s really not logical –every day you wake up with a plan, you execute that plan, you fail to succeed and then you go to bed only to repeat the process the next day, changing this and that hoping for a new outcome.  So while looking for jobs, attending networking groups, trying to fix all the sideways pictures that occurred with a blog update, I’ve had time to move a cat to California and take advantage of a crazy fare to London for my birthday (job rejection emails from the bots find me no matter where I am in the world).  You don’t need to be unemployed to be living in your own version of “Groundhog Day” but you do need to know how to recognize how it’s affecting your outlook on life and figure out how to make a few changes.  Traveling is the quickest way to change your story.

Discovering More

I am more than my job, this I realized many years ago when I made major changes in my life.  I am more than a title, more than expectations, more than the role I am to play (sister, daughter, girlfriend, etc.), I am more and I expect more of myself.  Having a bit of time this year to really question who I am led me to appreciate more along the way albeit with a lot of tears and chocolate. It led me to finding happiness on the road, to falling in love with a life I want and map out a roadmap in my quest to achieve these new goals. I can control my part, now fingers crossed that others see the same potential in me.

A New Year, a New Beginning

While not as bad as 2013 “The Really Sucky Year” as my sister and I call it when we lost our father, 2015, my third year of blogging on (resume) paper doesn’t look good if you judge me by my job (or lack of one).  But 2015, in memories, was pretty good. Hopefully soon, I’ll land a new job and surprise Mom with Ireland/London because that’s who I am – a traveler who wants to share the world with family, friends and you, the reader. So I’ll be back at the New York Times Travel Show in a few weeks with a new perspective to learn about everything new for 2016.

A BIG THANK YOU to all of those who shared kind words of support on blog posts, on twitter, Facebook, liking my Instagram posts and via emails, it has really meant a lot to me this year.