Spilled
On the difference between choosing spontaneity and having it choose you
For most of my adult life I would have described myself as someone who needs to know what’s happening and that plans must be made at least a week in advance. Then I met my partner and I threw that part of myself out the window. And, to tell you the truth, it’s the best thing I’ve ever done.
Instead of planning fun things weeks or months out, now we can plan our next adventure within an hour. We started small — impromptu trips to Orlando (from Tampa) for the weekend. Then we got bigger — vacations with a few months’ notice — then we got bigger again — a cross-country move to Vegas within two months. And we didn’t stop there. Weekend trips planned in an hour on a Friday morning getting us to our adventure by 9p and having all weekend to gallivant around. We did all we could to drive our own life and set the pace and direction straight for adventure.
But this kind of last-minute functionality feels different when you don’t choose it. Having the control to say “in three hours we’re leaving for Bryce Canyon” or “pack your bags we’re going to LA” is a much different scenario than finding yourself scrambling for accommodations last minute because your housesit cancelled on you. I’d say we’ve been lucky that it’s only happened a few times, but really that’s still too many.
This most recent one really stung though. We had this whole SoCal plan with sits booked end to end with no gaps and it was going to be great! And then a huge one in the middle cancelled. As soon as I got the message I stopped my partner mid-work and said we’ve got a huge problem. It really stopped us in our tracks and changed our entire mood for the remainder of the current sit. No longer was it a fun stop in the midst of a larger adventure, but now it was an anchor point to the emotional storm of finding a new sit (or three). And I get it, life happens. But then we’re holding the bag trying to find other sits to fill the gap and nothing works as well as the original did. We got it sorted and we’re all good now, but it still smarts when you really have to embrace the forced flexibility of this lifestyle instead of choosing it arms wide open. It also left us with this feeling of “we’re missing out” now since we’ve had to cross a location off our travel map. We were really looking forward to it and now it’s on the back burner since we’re not passing back through for an unknown amount of time.
Pinning that location up on the map as a place to work back towards. Looking forward to checking some new ones off. The map is full of places to go and we’re busy getting ourselves there.