The answer seems to always be: just go already!
This is how I spent Sunday: being a hermit in my Taipei bedroom. For 24 hours, my doors were shut, the TV was on and I passed out like an exhausted baby. This week, when people asked how I was doing, my only answer was exactly that: exhausted!
Since April 25th, this was my calendar: Taipei -> San Francisco -> 5 days later, hopped on a plan to Peru with Jetset Times Living contributor, Nicole Albertson -> layover in El Salvador (beer in an hour, yum!) -> 4 days of Peruvian paradise in Lima -> Buenos Aires, Argentina -> A few days of Palermo Hollywood and Palermo Soho (BA’s boutiquey districts) -> Plane ride to Iguazu Falls for a day -> Another plane ride back to Buenos Aires the next day -> Another few days to soak in stories about Evita and wine…and more wine -> Flight back to San Francisco with a layover in Bogota, Colombia -> Bought Colombian coffee as the airline almost lost our luggages (#MassiveHeartAttack!) -> Another layover in El Salvador (no time for beer during this round) -> Back in San Francisco for a week of work and writing -> Weekend in Livermore: California’s untapped wine country -> Road trip to Carmel by the Sea with fellow JST Creative Director, Lena Kazer -> LOVED Carmel, thanks to Relais & Châteaux L’Auberge Carmel’s hospitality -> Video shoot back in San Francisco with Team JST -> Spent a week in San Jose, California to see cousins and nieces (family first, guys!) -> Stopped by LinkedIn HQ -> Bottle Rock Festival in Napa -> Direct flight from SFO to Taipei -> Hosted a good friend from college visiting Taipei -> Being a tourist in my own city -> Zzzzzs on Sunday.
I’m exhausted just from writing it all. Regardless, wouldn’t trade this lifestyle for anything else in the world.
The day before leaving San Francisco, I was completely consumed by a documentary on Diana Vreeland, a legendary columnist and a revolutionary editor in the fashion industry. I’ve always loved her thought provoking column, “Why Don’t You?”
“There’s only one very good life and that’s the life you know you want and you make it yourself,” Diana used to say. And so she wrote, “Why Don’t You wash your blond child’s hair in dead champagne, as they do in France.” “Why Don’t You give someone an enormous white handkerchief-linen table-cloth, and in different handwriting and in different colors…have embroidered all the bon mots you can think of.”
Bon mots means “good words” in French. Good words, good things, good life. We define our goodness in so many possible ways. My exhausting agenda in a month is ultimately my good because it allowed me to stretch mentally, physically and spiritually. So why not? Why don’t I? Why…don’t you? Just go!
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This summer is all about taking that leap of faith and just go for it. If money has been the biggest road block in planning your travels, then you’ll learn in MacKeagon Voyce’s “Why You Should WWOOF” that through World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms, you can join a network connecting organic farmers to work on an organic farm in almost anywhere in the world. Need more ideas to save cash? Editor-in-chief Desiree Constance Choy also tackles the budget issue in “Travel Hacks 101: How To Fly For Free” by giving you the inside scoop on which travel rewards credit card might be worth investing.
Going for it by booking that ticket also means facing your inner fears. Our popular contributor, Nadia Cho, speaks to the daunting aspect of traveling that we all encounter: making new personal connections. In “How To Make Friends And Meet People In New Places,” Nadia offers practical tips on overcoming that awful feeling of isolation, which comes over all of us more often than one would think. Yes, a traveler’s life can be lonely sometimes. But how you carry yourself in a lonely situation is also a reflection of where you are in your life and within yourself.
Nowadays, a common way for travelers to meet new people is through Couchsurfing. In Meredith Todd’s piece, “Sleeping With Strangers: How To Couchsurf Like A Pro,” our new contributor dives in the art of couchsurf and how the world of social media can be utilized to a traveler’s best advantage. One may argue that couchsurfing isn’t exactly, well, jetset. Boy, is he/she dead wrong. Anytime you put yourself out there, jetsetting from one city to another, being open to exciting experiences that any foreign language or a brand new culture has to offer equates to a modern jetsetter. If you think otherwise, then you might want to get with the program. And may I add, a couchsurfing program, for that matter.
It’s how the Lima/Buenos Aires trip came together. Nicole and I literally thought: Why not? Let’s just do it. So we did and had the time of our lives. Do yourself a favor this summer, book a trip. Put your worries aside and just go.
Yes, the thought of another trip is overwhelming even for a constant traveler like myself. But a day of being a bedridden hermit is worth an entire month of laughter, joy, rekindled friendships, silliness, all with a lot of sass.
PS. My mother just asked if I would join her in Hainan, China this week. Still exhausted, I said yes. Why not? I had to ask myself. The answer seems to always be: just go already!
With much summer love,
