Fear, Expectations, & Real Life

Dear Wilson,

As I promised in the previous blog, I'm going to take a different approach to the following blogs. Also, I'm going to fast-forward a bit to the current day. So I will be extremely brief with the next 2 countries we visited after Bali. 

After Bali, we met up with Hunter in Athens, Greece. I can't believe he flew across the world to meet up with us! Again, it's really cool to see a familiar face in a foreign country. We spent 8 days together and I'm really glad he came to see us. Hunter's familiarity helped Cali as well. She was really missing family again since leaving Bali. Anyway, to be completely honest, Greece was “ok” as a country. The food was the best we've had outside of the States but I could pass on their culture. The scenery was ok as well. Overall not my favorite location. 

Next, we went to Istanbul, Turkey. On day 1, I thought it was going to be awesome. To be honest, we were disappointed overall after 2 weeks in Istanbul. I'm glad we went though. I mean that when I say I'm glad we went to be disappointed. We are just learning about expectations on travel. I will elaborate later on what we have learned. The reason I'm fast skipping through these experiences is because I have been relatively bored lately. That's not a bad thing in the sense that we are just learning a few lessons of life along the way. 

Sorry to just skip through about a month of travel. We are currently in Split, Croatia. Absolutely beautiful by the way! I honestly just wanted to get back to the current day since I was lazy on keeping up with the blog and I would prefer to just talk about my thoughts at this point more than locations specifically. Ok, so now for the current thoughts. 

We have been gone for almost 4 months now. I will be real. Travel fatigue is setting in for all of us. We are kind of in a weird spot. We already booked our flight back to New Orleans on December 14th. Our housing arrangements are to live in Chris and Larrel’s pool house until January 3rd, then we move to Colorado. So basically, we are just living overseas until the time comes as planned. I'm happy to be here but there are struggles. The thought of being “world travelers” is so intriguing. We sold everything and took a lot of risks for this trip. No regrets but still to this day, so much fear. I lose sleep over our family's future. I had the perfect house with a super cheap interest rate/mortgage in a familiar area next to my family. I completely deleted that comfort from our lives. “They” say, if you feel fear, you are going in the right direction. I don't know who the fuck “they” are, but I guess I believe them. As a dad and husband, I'm supposed to provide. By the way, that's a fucking tall order… It also gets much more difficult when you eliminate every comfort you ever had in life. I'm not saying our travels haven't been worth it. They most certainly have. I'm just saying it comes at a price. On almost a daily basis I wonder… “What the fuck did I do”? We had it so easy. Don't get me wrong, “easy” came at a very high price tag as well. I worked my ass off for what we had. Most of you don't know this but it's so very true… Anyway, once I had “the easy life”, I basically pressed the reset button. Often, I wonder if I'm a dumbass for doing so. I guess my biggest motivation is showing my kids, others, and also myself, that you don't have to fit the mold of society. You don't have to do what others expect. You can be different and live a life that most think is impossible. To do that though, comes this fear. The fear never seems to subside. It's always there when you want to do something that seems “cool”. The cool shit in life just takes a leap into that fear. I truly think fear is the gatekeeper. If you can get through it, memorable life experiences start. Here's the thing I didn't expect though… Once you experience what you deemed as cool, you realize that it wasn't what you thought it was going to be after all. The idea of being a world traveler just isn't what we thought. Life is funny that way. You finally get to where you thought you wanted to be. Then, you realize it wasn't what you expected. Erica and I are learning that expectations are never as they seem, once actually lived out. It's just the way life is I guess. This may not be a negative thing. This is just a life lesson to be more content with the present circumstances. We all dream of a future that is supposed to be absolutely perfect. The reality is that maybe perfect is boring. Maybe a little struggle is part of the beauty of life. All I know is that we are learning to not set such rigid expectations for our future fantasies. Maybe what we think we want isn't actually true happiness. Maybe happiness is the journey. I believe this trip was here for us to learn to be more comfortable with fear and to be more content with the journey. The destination is an ever-moving target. Don't believe me? Set a goal and hit it. As soon as you hit it, your personal goals will immediately jump to an even higher goal. You can't “catch” happiness… It's “fast as fuck, boi”. Only a few of you will laugh at the last sentence. It's only funny if you know, Lol. Ok, I'm done with my rant for now. Life is weird as fuck. Good luck figuring this shit out. I sure as fuck can't.