Posted by Elizabeth

As of late last night I am back from my trip, a little jet lagged but restored in mind and spirit, just as I’d hoped. Over the next few weeks I’ll be writing about some of the important life in pencil lessons that I learned during the course of my travels. But for now, enjoy this “sneak preview” of my Top Five Life in Pencil Moments from the trip, the moments when I tried something new, bucked the system, took a chance, or explored a new path.

1. Staying with Tonci and Mladenka, our Croatian friends. Less than a week into our round-the-world trip, we met Tonci and Mladenka, a Croatian couple about our age, in the lobby of our hostel in Lisbon. After quickly striking up a conversation, we made plans to take a day trip together, one of the most memorable experiences of our entire journey. “If you ever come to Croatia, let us know,” they encouraged when we parted ways. After briefly staying in touch over the past year and a half via email, this trip offered us the opportunity to do just that. It was a risk: having previously spent no more than a few hours with them, we fashioned the Croatian portion of our itinerary around a visit to their remote island of Krk. But we were shown the kind of hospitality you’d expect from long-lost friends, as they treated us to incredible local foods, spent two days touring us around their rural island, and showed us a true slice of Croatian life. We were glad we took a chance.

2. Eating fried anchovies for the first time. I am an adventurous eater, but I rarely dive into the seafood realm. Upon our arrival at Tonci and Maldenka’s house, they prepared a small feast drawing upon the freshest goods from their small island. I was a little nervous when Tonci proudly presented a steaming platter of small anchovies the size of my thumb, fried to perfection. “These were just caught today,” he boasted. How could I refuse? He taught me how to deftly debone the fish, and within moments I was enjoying the much-maligned but surprisingly-delicious anchovy.

3. Trying my hand at new languages. It’s always nerve-wracking to travel in cultures where I don’t speak the language, and this trip presented me with three new ones: Slovenian, Croatian, and Italian. But I made the choice to dive right in, learning a few key phrases to get me going (please, thank you, greetings, counting to three, and knowing how to ask for tap water), and picking up a few new ones along the way. Rather than shying away from restaurants without an English translation on the menu, I picked my way through the the phrasebook, asked questions as best I could, and made a few random selections. I’d like to think this led to smoother sailing and a greater connection to people, and only once did my strategy lead to a complete disaster, when I was screamed at by a waiter in a very local trattoria in Rome who, exasperated, insinuated that I was a complete idiot (definitely a future blog topic).

4. Going for coffee with Sanja from the tourist office. Arriving in the Istria region of Croatia, which some describe as Tuscany 50 years ago, with a rental car but no plans for the next two days, our first stop was the local tourist office in Buzet, a sleepy town perched on a beautiful hill overlooking a verdant valley. We were lucky enough to meet Sanja, an enthusiastic English-speaking local who planned an off-the-beaten path itinerary for us, including a truffle hunting experience one bright morning (surely the topic of a future post). We so enjoyed speaking with her at her office that we risked looking like total weirdos by inviting her to join us for a drink later in the afternoon. She accepted, and we passed a lively afternoon in the company of an interesting young woman, getting an intimate window into Croatian life.

5. Going on a balsamic vinegar tour. When we were based on Bologna, Italy, we took a day trip to Modena, the world-famous home of balsamic vinegar. I was interested in taking a tour to learn more about how the vinegar is made, and contacted the town’s tourist office, who made arrangements for us. After a public bus deposited us on a leafy residential street lined with stately homes, we looked at each other in utter confusion, sharing a collective thought: This can’t be the place. Soon we were ushered up a rickety staircase, where the pungent aroma of dark, musky balsamic vinegar wafted through the air. Narrow rooms filled with small wooden casks filled the space. Traditionally, we learned from the proprietress, Mrs. Barberini, balsamic vinegar was not a business but a family tradition passed down through the generations. The vinegar was not “farmed,” as we had assumed, but aged in barrels in home attics, which provided the perfect conditions for aging the vinegar. After listening to a fascinating history, we sampled the vinegar, a dark, viscous syrup with an unparalleled taste. Afterwards, Mrs. Barberini offered us an espresso, served in delicate demitasse cups, and when we had spent an hour chatting we were glad we had taken a leap of faith.

Check back later for photos!

Posted by Anne

Does anyone else find that travel isn’t inherently relaxing?  You plan a vacation because you’re in need of a break.  And then in your efforts to be a good tourist and “see the sights”, you come home having had fun certainly, but not particularly relaxed?  This happens to me a fair bit, which is why I decided to approach my recent weekend getaway entirely differently. 

While it wasn’t exactly on par with Elizabeth’s farmstay in Slovenia, it accomplished what I needed, which was an escape.  I needed an escape from a lot of things—from planning, work, and planning for work.  And so the last thing I wanted was to plan the vacation.  I wanted to avoid the entire experience of being a tourist.  I wanted to simply slide into another community and achieve a complete sense of anonymity. 

I’ve actually been inspired to take this approach since our trip to Chile over the winter. As we plowed our way through Patagonia, I noticed something.  Namely, the same people.  Over and over again.  At first, it was sort of pleasant to notice the same faces a couple days in a row.  But it started to feel strange—over a 2 week span of time, we saw the same two couples three separate times.  At restaurants, in hotels, and on buses.  It was as if we were on a guided tour, and nobody had bothered to tell us. And it was easy to identify the culprit…we were all using the exact same guide book. 

Ironically, the guidebook my fellow travelers were using was The Lonely Planet.  Yep, that series of guide books which began as an effort to publicize lesser-known hotels, eateries, and attractions has apparently become the travel bible for adventurous young people across the world.  And so we made our way across Chile, believing ourselves to be alone, and then nodding politely at the same 4 Swiss tourists we saw off and on for 2 weeks.  Our planet?  Not so lonely. 

Which brings me back to this past weekend.  We wanted something different.  More relaxing, and more removed from the traditional tourist experience.  So we took off, sans guide book, and outside the high tourist season.  We also chose to travel to a town where we’ve already been.  A place where we could escape into the flow of another scene.   

All weekend, we found ourselves surrounded by locals.  There were tourists too, of course, but just as many (or more) locals, going about their business.  They surrounded us in coffee shops and galleries.  They passed us with their dogs on the walking trail on the pier.  They smiled, and moved on.  We did see the same faces multiple times, but they were the faces who live there. 

Our funky hotel lobby, with its adjoining coffee shop.

The weekend culminated in an impromptu invitation from our hotel to attend the “grand opening party” of the coffee shop next door.  Normally, I’d avoid this kind of gathering—opting instead for the safe predictability of my tourist identity at a restaurant listed in my guide book.  But we decided to go.  We ate (free) appetizers and drank (free) beverages, and listened to a (free) Irish folk band.  We chatted with some locals, and spent some time to ourselves.  At the party, we saw the same brewery-worker who’d served us a pint earlier in the evening, and bumped into the same shopkeeper who’d sold me a sweater that afternoon.   In short, we achieved exactly what I wanted, which was the opportunity to slide into another community—another life—for just a couple short days.

I never used to think it was possible to achieve the feeling of true “escape” for a mere weekend getaway.  But when you travel somewhere real…where the location has a purpose beyond catering to tourists, you can find something very removed from your day-to-day stressors. 

I re-wrote my image of a vacation.  And it worked.

How do you achieve “escape” when you’re on vacation?  Do you enjoy being a tourist or do you like to blend into the local scene?

Posted by Elizabeth

As you are reading this, I should be relaxing at a Slovenian family farmstay, munching on fresh fruits and house-cured meats dried by the harsh Karst winds.  If everything went according to plan, we flew an extraordinarily long distance from Albuquerque to Rome, where we were unceremoniously transported from the airport to the Rome Termini train station.  From there we easily translated the mind-numbingly complicated simple train schedule and bumbled our way breezed through buying our tickets for a train to Trieste that just happened to be boarding in three hours 10 minutes.  What luck!  After a stress-free, six-hour ride, where we enjoyed subpar world-class service in the dining car, we checked into our one-star charming hotel, feeling like zombies completely refreshed.  After a fitful peaceful slumber, plagued unfettered by jet lag, we rose the next morning to stale white bread fresh croissants and checked out our beleaguered hassle-free rental car, where the desk staff gave us shit zero flack about taking the vehicle across two borders.  From there we slogged sailed through the Slovenian border crossing, following the indecipherable clear directions provided by the farmstay, which quickly deposited us in the middle of nowhere at our destination.  Total nightmare Complete Success!

Obviously, I’ve traveled enough to know what can go wrong.

It’s important for me to get out of the country at least once a year; the reasons are many.  It’s important for me to expose myself to the larger world beyond my front door.  It’s important for me to learn new things about other cultures and, in the process, myself.   It’s important for me to see how other people live and approach life.  But most important, there is nothing like travel – particularly international travel – to remind me that nothing goes according to plan.

Most of the time I live my life in a vacuum, blissfully aware-yet-unaware that any semblance of control I think I have over my life is a complete sham.  We all know intellectually that none of us can control the future, that at the end of the day nothing is within the bounds of our power.  And yet, living in the US, most of us can arrange our lives in such a way that we think we have control.  After visiting 22 countries, I have never experienced a place where it is so easy to will things into existence by sheer grit and determination.  Of course, this isn’t all bad.  It’s a wonderful thing to be able to change one’s circumstances through personal effort.  But I fear that, as a culture, we’ve lost our ability to live in accordance with reality:  whether we choose to believe it or not, life is lived in pencil.

I have a few goals for my trip, aside from having fun and eating fabulous local food (go ahead, be jealous):

1.  I will not be a backseat driver. Maikael and I have a long and checkered past when it comes to driving together on foreign thoroughfares.  It mainly involves me nagging at him or dramatically covering my eyes.  We try to avoid these situations (hello, compartmentalization!) by taking public transportation as much as possible, but due to a series of complicated circumstances which I will not bore you with, we are renting a car in Italy and taking it across two international borders for eight days of our trip.  Recipe for disaster?  Hopefully not.  Since I can’t drive a stick, Maikael is the Designated Driver, which means he has to shoulder the stress of driving and I need to keep my mouth shut and my co-pilot skills sharp.  This will keep the overall stress level down for both of us.

2.  I will not panic when things don’t go according to plan. I love travel, but I don’t tend to be a great traveler.  Sure I can fall asleep anywhere, but I tend to experience minor freak-outs when things go awry.  I am making a promise to myself to keep a cool head when the inevitable occurs, and remind myself that there is always a Plan B.

3.  I will keep my expectations in check. I tend to suffer from an acute case of letting my expectations run amok.  I try to cram too much into a day.  I predetermine how great something will be from afar.  I overinflate the importance of a meal.  The result is that I’m often disappointed, which ruins experiences.  Above all, I want to enjoy this final trip as a family of two, which will probably mean ratcheting down my expectations a few notches.

4.  I will open myself to unexpected opportunities. Because of those pesky expectations, I have a tendency to become hyperfocused on The Plan, often missing better opportunities.  Some of my fondest travel memories involve embracing the unexpected, so I promise to treat my plans as sketched (lightly) in pencil.

5.  I will not try to maintain my life at home. I will let emails remain unanswered.  I won’t compulsively update my Facebook status.  I will not think of the bills and mail piling up.  I will not think of the million things I need to do when I walk in the door after two and a half weeks in Europe.  Instead, I will trust that all of that will be waiting for me when I get home.

When I return from my trip, I hope to reconnect with what it feels like to live my life in pencil, as terrifying as it always is.  I hope to return refreshed and invigorated, with bright ideas for the new horizon of our blog.  I hope to eat a lot of great food.  But until then, I’ll be digging deep into The Files (you didn’t know there were Files, did you?), bringing you topics that I’ve been archiving for such an occasion.  Enjoy the eclectic ride!  I’ll return “live” the 28^th with, I’m sure, lots of stories from my travels through Italy, Slovenia, and Croatia, and many more lessons for living life in pencil.

Do you live under an illusion of control?  What helps to shake you back to reality?

Posted by Anne

This weekend, I conducted a highly scientific experiment.  I attempted to avoid all discussion of my future (or planning for my future) for 48 hours.  Here’s the context…

My husband and I skipped town for the weekend, and indulged in a much needed getaway.  Our destination was the intersection of the Columbia River and the Pacific Ocean—the little town of Astoria, Oregon.  The last time we visited Astoria, it was both a success and a disaster.  We loved the bizarre town—with its filming locales from The Goonies, its funky storefronts, misty skies, and maritime vibe.  But the last time we visited, I nearly ruined the final day of the trip with my obsessive planning and freakish need to know the future.  I wrote about it here.  It wasn’t pretty. 

This time, I decided to approach the weekend with a different attitude, and I’d like to offer the following report on the results of my weekend experiment. 

The Purpose:  To test my ability to spend 48 hours with my husband (including a couple of long car rides) without forcing us into a conversation wherein I attempt to plan the next 5 years of our lives. 

Hypothesis:  By focusing on the present rather than the future, I will enjoy myself more on our weekend away, thereby affirming my dedication and commitment to this Life in Pencil.

Null Hypothesis:  I will see no difference whatsoever, and be forced to conclude that Life in Pencil is a load of hooey. 

Methods/Procedures/Strategy: 
Before leaving, I set these rules…

1. For the duration of the trip, I am forbidden from introducing any subject that requires looking beyond 2 to 3 hours into the future. 

2. I will refrain from purposely steering our conversation towards the future.

3. When tempted to ask obnoxious, unanswerable questions about our future life together, I will look for a way to comment on the landscape, the weather, or The Goonies. 

4. If completely unable to comment on the present, I will ask about our plans for the next meal.  (This is generally a safe bet for me.  I’m easily distracted by food.)

Caffeine, children's literature, and time to write. I was armed with many strategies to distract myself from the future.

Results:
It was hard for me.  Nothing shocking there.  The surprising part was that my little experiment worked…just not in the way I suspected. You see, we still talked about the future.  But in a very different way.  I can only describe it as….natural.  Most of the time, we attended to the fun we were having.  We commented on the locals, the breeze, the food, and ships cutting through the water.  When our future arose in our conversations, we didn’t set timelines.  We wondered instead of planned.  And it was fun.  It was fun because I didn’t allow myself to become agitated.  I wasn’t fixated on finding answers to my questions about the future, and so I learned that daydreaming about the future with a loved one is a truly entertaining and emotionally intimate way to pass the time.   

Discussion: 
Avoiding all discussion of my future apparently isn’t the answer.  Attending to the present doesn’t always mean ignoring what’s to come.  The difference was in letting those conversations arise without effort—without forcing them.  And when the answers don’t come, and our future can’t be predicted…it’s time to let the conversation go.  It’s time to move back to pleasure of NOW.  

Final Note:  Feel free to attempt a replication of this study, if you suffer from the same “planning addict issues” I do.  If it doesn’t work for you, well, I don’t know what to tell you. This was an iron-clad study with highly scientific findings.  

Oh, and Life in Pencil is NOT, as it turns out, a load of hooey.

Posted by Anne

Sometimes, I can share successful life in pencil moments.  The moments when I’m able to say I achieved my goal of stepping back, setting aside my plans, and allowing a moment to unfold naturally. 

Nope, this is not one of those posts.  This is a post about failure, and starting over.

Over the weekend, I traveled to the Midwest for a whirlwind weekend to visit family, and celebrate my grandfather’s birthday.  With only 3 days to make it from the Northwest to the Midwest, I knew this weekend wasn’t about rest and relaxation—more about capitalizing on family bonding time. 

I was convinced, and I mean convinced my flight left at 5:00pm.  Imagine my surprise, if you will, when I stopped off in my parent’s study around 11:30 to print my boarding pass and stumbled upon the following statement:  Flight departs at 1:01pm.  Woops. 

After some quick calculations and a reality check, I knew I wouldn’t miss the flight.  That wasn’t the issue.  The issue was this:  I hadn’t planned the afternoon to go like this.  You see, I don’t get to see my family as often as I’d like, and every moment is precious. I’d planned an afternoon.  And my plans were shot.  Cue the meltdown.

The reason my reaction was such a failure?  It should have been an opportunity to meet some life in pencil goals, which I failed to meet.  Here’s a play-by-play of possibly appropriate life in pencil reactions, and MY reaction.

Situation #1:  Plane departs in an hour and a half, and I haven’t packed. 

Appropriate reaction:  “Yikes!  It’s a good thing I checked that flight time when I did!   Hey Mom and Sis—Think you could give me a hand packing while I finish printing my boarding pass??” 

My reaction:  Burst into tears and watch mom and sister swirl around my room packing my things in a super-human feat of tidy and swift folding. 

Situation #2:  I realize I will not have time to accompany my sister on our planned lunchtime outing to one of our favorite childhood greasy spoons. 

Appropriate reaction:  “Bummer!  If that restaurant has been around since I was 5, I’m pretty sure it’ll be there next time I’m in town.”

My reaction:  Pout, and purchase some very dry pretzels at the airport that have zero hope of cheering me up.    

Situation #3:  I must forego my plans to kiss and hug my adorable nephew about 10 times before boarding my plane because he’s taking a necessary nap.

Appropriate reaction:  Okay, this one could have deserved a tear or two.  And then I could have allowed everyone to remind me that I’ll see him again in 3 WEEKS. 

MY reaction:  Inconsolable weeping, as though I’d never see the child again. 

Situation #4:  I had planned to say a leisurely goodbye to my parents, instead of a frantic one.    

Appropriate reaction:  Stick with the plan.  I TOTALLY had time to say goodbye to everyone in a non-dramatic, non-frenetic, eminently normal manner. 

MY reaction:  Not so normal.  Pouty hugs and feeble smiles. 

Situation #5:  Sitting at my gate (with time to spare), I realize I’d been a total drama-queen and failed to act in a normal (and “life in pencil”) manner. 

Appropriate reaction:  I could have simply said to myself, “Wow, this is not how I’d like to react in future situations.  I’m not going to waste more tears judging myself and feeling embarrassed.  I’ll simply reaction different next time, and hey…it’s bloggable.” 

My reaction:  Eventually I did find this reaction within myself…but not until I reached the Denver airport.  I allowed myself to spend the first leg of my flight feeling guilty and childish. 

You see?  FAILURE.  And all because I had to reconfigure 4 hours of my life.  I’m not happy with my reaction, but this is why Beginnings are so important.  I can’t erase that afternoon, and I can’t erase my reaction.  But I can start over.  React differently next time.  Redeem myself.  Here is my new beginning…my vow to myself:

Next time I encounter a hitch in my plans—I will:

1. Ask myself if I want to act rationally, or dramatically.

2. Pay attention to what’s going right instead of what’s going wrong. 

3. Act flexible, even when I don’t feel flexible.

4. Spare others from the drama of my rigid planning.

5. Acknowledge my anxiety and frustration without judging it.

How are you at going with the flow?  Have you ever unreasonably freaked out, and had to start over?  When your plans change and you have to change your vision of your day, how do you react?  How about when life takes an unexpected turn? 

Posted by Elizabeth

I’m planning an April trip to Europe, which will involve two and a half weeks sampling the cuisine of Italy, staying on a family farm in Slovenia, and island-hopping through Croatia.   This trip was rather spur of the moment – when I found out I was pregnant, I insisted we take a final trip as a childless couple, and I knew exactly where I wanted to go.  After cashing in all of the miles we earned on our round-the-world trip last year, netting us two round-trip tickets to Rome, the planning began in earnest.  Soon I found myself doing what I do best:  pouring over Lonely Planet guidebooks, calling friends who had traveled in this part of the world, deciphering Italian train schedules (impossible), comparing ferry routes, checking the weather, and memorizing the food section of the Italian phrasebook.  The irony is that I embarked on all of this planning knowing full well that the best experiences of this trip will be those I never plan.

How do I know this?  First, because I’ve had the good fortune of traveling a fair amount, this is always the case (except, of course, when you show up without reservations in Lovina, Bali, during the Ramadan holiday, where the entire population of Muslim Indonesia is vacationing).  And second, because I agree with a recent article I read on maximizing happy coincidences while traveling, which states that “accidents — good and bad — happen when we’re away. More so, maybe, because there’s a certain randomness about travel — a sense that the unexpected can happen.”  The article argues that it’s easy to focus on the bad accidents – getting fined for not understanding how a foreign toll road works, getting scammed for five Euros, misunderstanding movie schedules, shadowy rodents running through train cars in India (all of which have happened to me, by the way).  But the flip side is that, for every bad accident, there is usually a good one, and these are what make travel – and life itself – fun and interesting.  And it’s this duality that explains the reason I love – and loathe – traveling.  I am an accidental tourist in sheep’s clothing, a planner by nature who loves the idea of traveling spontaneously, but who fights it tooth and nail.  So how can we maximize happy coincidences – both in travel and in everyday life? According to the article there are four ways to do this — and I bet our bright readers can find even more.

The fabulous mansion in Buenos Aires, before it was not-so-fabulous.

First, realize that “sometimes, bad accidents can lead to good things.”  While traveling in Buenos Aires, we had the good fortune of staying in a gorgeous old mansion in the heart of the city, which catered to long-term travelers.  Sure, the accommodations were a little rustic, but we loved the vibe of this place so much that we arranged to stay an extended period after a brief jaunt to Uruguay.  The night before we departed for Uruguay, the owner informed us that he had made a mistake with the reservation, and that our room wouldn’t be available upon our return.  (Insert “not my problem” shoulder shrug here.)  Being the peak of high season, we unsuccessfully scrambled to find other accommodations at the 11^th hour (literally), finally resigning ourselves to dealing with it when we returned.  The problem was, we had just bought a boatload of leather goods hours earlier, which we had planned to stash in the mansion while we were in Uruguay.  Desperate, we called a friend of my mother-in-law, who had told us to call him if we needed help.  Not only did he store my boots and purses while we were away, he also offered us to stay at his gorgeous high-rise apartment in the heart of the swanky Recoleta neighborhood upon our return, where we had access to real air conditioning and a bathtub.  In this case, a bad accident lead to a very good thing.

A very memorable afternoon.

The article also advises to “be open to new experiences.”  This, in my mind, is one of the cardinal rules of travel (and life).  On our trip we traveled into the heart of Portugal’s Duoro Valley, the seat of the country’s port wine production.  We nosed our rental car down dusty lanes in search of the area’s new museum, only to find it closed when we arrived.  Disappointed, we began our long drive back to town when Maikael spotted a car parked outside a neighboring property that hadn’t been there when we arrived.  “I’m going to see if they know anything about the museum,” said Maikael, hopping out the car as I slumped in the front seat.  After a few minutes, I glanced in the rear view mirror to see Maikael standing next to a weathered old man, a silly grin slapped on his face, beckoning me with swooping arm motions.  While the old man – who owned the surrounding vineyard – called his neighbor to open the museum, he invited us to wait with him and his friends.  For the next hour we propped ourselves on ancient farm equipment and shared glasses of syrupy moscatel wine, talking life in our passable Sportugese.  What could have been a forgettable experience was one of the most memorable afternoons of our entire trip…one that never would have transpired had we been unwilling to take the leap out of our car and into a new experience.

Worth the diversion.

Adjust your perspective. Sometimes, the direst situations end up being fortuitous, if we can just look at the world through a different lens.  After hearing horror stories about traveling in India I wasn’t sure I wanted to go anymore, even though we had planned to spend three weeks traversing the northern part of the country.  Looking for alternative plans, we discovered that Bhutan – a country I had recently become enchanted with – was only a short plane ride from Delhi, where our ticket had already routed us (and when in life is Bhutan ever going to be a short plane ride from anywhere?).  After making some last-minute adjustments to our itinerary, we cut our time in India in half and planned a side trip to Bhutan, a highlight of our entire eight-month journey.  Looking back, I can’t imagine that trip without Bhutan, and our willingness to change plans midstream and craft a bad situation into a good one made it possible.

Timing is everything. Is there any greater truism?  One scorching August day, we found ourselves in need of transportation from Pamukkale to Goreme, Turkey, a long, dusty ride that required a few bus transfers and an expensive ticket at the height of tourist season.  As we investigated different bus companies around town, the schedules were quickly filling (or so they told us) and the ticket prices were rising with the mercury outside.   We were getting desperate when we stumbled into a tourist agency that, upon telling them the date and time we were interested in departing, exclaimed, “You’re in luck!  We have a bus that needs to be returned to Goreme that evening.  It will travel direct to the town, no stops, and the tickets are half price.”  It seemed too good to be true, but after discussing our options and gaining some assurances, we bought the tickets.  Sure, this happy coincidence could have easily turned into a bad accident, but as promised, because we were in the right place at the right time – and willing to take a calculated leap of faith – we scored cheap tickets on a direct bus that was roomier than any of the other companies’.

Us and our Croatian friends at Sintra

Of course there are lots of other happy coincidences I could share with you, from the amazing steakhouse we discovered in Buenos Aires vis a vis NPR’s Bob Mondello, to the unforgettable hotel we stumbled upon in Ubud, Bali, because we waited until the last minute and it was the only reservation request that anybody responded to.  But I’ll leave you with a final example of a happy coincidence.  While staying at a hostel in Lisbon, Portugal, we found ourselves in the lobby one evening, trying to decode the mysteries of the Portuguese train schedule that was mounted to the wall.  As our fingers etched the route from Lisbon to Sintra, a nearby historic town, another couple approached from the back, commenting that they were planning on taking the same trip the next morning.  After chatting for a few minutes and sizing one another up, we quickly decided to travel together the next day, and what I remember from that experience is not the gorgeous Moorish town but spending a wonderful day together with a fantastic couple from Croatia.  Anton, the husband, had been to Sintra before and expertly played tour guide.  We laughed and joked and shared stories from our countries over a rustic Portuguese lunch.  And when we go to Croatia in April, we will visit our “happy coincidence” friends on their tiny island of Krk.

Am I going to stop planning? Probably not.  But if I can plan with the expectation that I’ll throw those plans out the moment something better comes along, I’ll be the better for it.

Are you an “accidental tourist” (or not)?  What are some of the happiest coincidences you can recall while traveling?  What are other ways that we can maximize “happy coincidences” – both in travel and in life?

Posted by Anne

Elizabeth and I have written many letters to each other over the past 5 years.  Many.  Each is special, and each is distinct.  But every so often, there are letters—stories—that stand out from the others.  Elizabeth’s favorite has always been my “Stink Burger Letter”, which she referenced back in August.  We’ve received at least one request for the Stink Burger story (thank you Kitchen Witch!), and since it’s an apropos story for Life in Pencil, I will indulge (or bore) you.  Enjoy.  

Once upon a time, I decided to get my PhD.  And deep into my doctoral education, I temporarily burned out.  I was tired.  Weary.  Done.  Confused.  And so I did what any privileged 20-something would do.  I went on a road trip—alone—on a self proclaimed “summer of self-discovery and relaxation”.  My journey took me coast to coast, and along the way, I landed in Flagstaff, Arizona.  This was to be my home-base for some important activities.  In typical Anne fashion, I had it all planned:  1) Hike in Grand Canyon, 2) Fly-fish in Grand Canyon, 3) Gain insight about my purpose in this world while doing said activities.  Good list, right? 

I made it through my Grand Canyon hike.  I’ll spare you the details, as I know you’re more concerned about the Stink Burger situation.  Suffice to say that the hike was beautiful, dusty, lonely, and hot as hell.  So that evening, I did what any wise traveler would do when feeling physically exhausted and lonely.  I looked for a really good meal. 

Enter…the Stink Burger.  I got back to town, cleaned off the canyon dust, and headed to a nearby microbrewery.  The “Stink Burger” had come highly recommended, and I’m not one to argue with layers of meat, roasted garlic cloves (hence the name), and an onion ring piled high on a bun.  I settled into a beat-up wooden chair, and the waiter looked at me a little suspiciously, clearly wondering why this slightly sad-looking woman was alone…in a bar…ordering a big greasy burger.  I matched his gaze, and then I ordered that Stink Burger with confidence!  With gusto!  It arrived, and I was thrilled to tuck in, having truly earned my dose of saturated fat.  (Hiking + existential soul-searching burns tons of calories, in case you’re wondering.)  The hunks of garlic were soft and mild, and the onion ring was so perfect I considered ordering an entire side of them.  I wrote a letter to my sweetie (now my hubby), read a few pages of a book, and washed down that mighty stink burger with a malty brown ale.  I was feeling better already.  And then… 

The crippling food poisoning didn’t hit until the next morning, getting ready to head out for activity #2, fly-fishing.  And when it hit, it hit big.  There I was, a pitiful lonely traveler trapped in my room in an Arizona hostel, puking my guts out.  And let me tell you folks, a hostel is not the ideal location if you’re suffering the ramifications of a poorly cooked Stink Burger.  I kept hoofing it down the hall to the bathroom, where well-meaning, patchouli-scented hippies would stare at me, but never speak.  I must have looked odd to them—pale, unhappy, and lacking a guitar in my hand or a mellow smile on my face. 

I spent the next 24 hours face-down on my hostel mattress, listening to the sound of the train outside my window, and replayed the same question, over and over in my head.  What the hell am I doing here?  I wished I had a friend with me.  My boyfriend.  My sister.  ANYONE who knew me.  I thought I felt lonely at the rim of the Canyon.  Nope…this was loneliness.  Puking over a Stink Burger in a likewise stinky hostel. 

I tried to remember why I was taking this trip.  Something to do with feeling overwhelmed, growing weary of graduate school, and needing an escape.  And I guess I thought I needed to “escape” totally on my own.  I was only partially right.

That entire trip, I felt free, which was exactly how I wanted to feel.  But I’d never expected that freedom to feel so hollow.  Back at the canyon’s rim, I was surrounded by people…couples, families, and grandparents in embroidered t-shirts and awkward-looking baseball caps.  For that whole day, I stared at people.  At little kids delightfully licking ice cream cones.  At parents attempting to take pictures of their too-cool-for-canyon teenagers. And I stared at the canyon—surreal and massive. 

Did my “summer of self-discovery” accomplish what I had intended?  Well, yes and no.  I learned that as much as I love adventures and exploration, I had reached a point where I was very ready to share them with other people.  It was the beginning of my need to feel…you guessed it…settled.  And I learned something else.  In case you’re wondering, you can’t plan the contents of your own existential awakening.  And my Stink Burger was proof.  

The End. 

Ever gone on a trip to shake things up?  Discover yourself?  Any traveling misadventures to share? 

Posted by Elizabeth

When I heard that Elizabeth Gilbert had written a new book, I was nervous.  I wasn’t sure I wanted to read Committed, which picks up where Eat Pray Love leaves off, chronicling her difficult decision to marry Felipe, the man she literally sails off into the sunset with at the end of the story.  There was no way this book could ever live up to EPL, for I am one of those women – and I know there are many of us – for whom EPL changed my life.  Although Maikael and I had already been toying with the idea of taking eight months out of our life to embark on a journey of self-discovery around the world, EPL sealed the deal for me.  Inspired by her tale, we even spent two weeks lapping up life and culture in Ubud, Bali, which she details in such a mesmerizing way.  For me, Gilbert’s prose captured what I was feeling but was unable to put into words at that time in my life, feelings about being caught between a conventional and unconventional life, about being unsure what I wanted from life, about not knowing who I was or what made me happy in the slightest.  As different as our lives were – I was ten years her junior and not considering divorce – I identified with Liz Gilbert.

But I know not everyone felt this way.  When my former bookclub read Eat Pray Love, our group was fiercely divided by equal amounts of adoration and dislike of the book.  Some felt her journey was trite, her head inflated, her love story too tidy and saccharine.  Other just simply didn’t “get it,” which was unfathomable to me, who had found such connection and solace in the book.  As I traveled around the globe, the subject of the book often came up in conversations with fellow explorers (it really was a worldwide phenomenon), and, even amongst the highly self-selecting group of long-term travelers, the division of opinions was just as acute.  Love it or hate it, the book clearly made people feel something.

However, when I learned that Elizabeth Gilbert was coming to town – and that $35 could buy me two tickets and a hardback copy of the book – I was Committed.  So last Wednesday night, me and 500 fellow Liz Gilbert fans, including my former therapist, filed into an expansive ballroom at the University of New Mexico, which was stuffed to the gills with conference seating and estrogen.  The audience was one loud hum, buzzing with the anticipation of a cultural icon about to speak.  But a loud hush fell over the room as soon as Elizabeth Gilbert stepped to the stage, a flowy grey cardigan draped over her thin frame, her tousled blond hair pulled away from her face in a messy twist, a genuine smile etched on her face.

For the next 30 minutes she talked about the process of writing Committed, which represents the fruits of her second attempt to write a follow-up book to EPL. She spent two years writing a 500-page manuscript…and then threw the entire thing away. As she spoke these words, I’m pretty sure I heard myself groan audibly.  I’ve never written anything 500 pages in length, but I’ve written something a tenth of the size, and even throwing that away is vomit-inducing.  Gilbert discussed how difficult it was to ditch the manuscript, one in which she had received a considerable advance from her publisher and who, after two years of work, was soon expecting a publishable book.  “But the book was horrible,” she said.  “It wasn’t ‘me.’  It wasn’t written in my voice.  It was written in the voice of who I thought I should be after the success of Eat Pray Love.”  Her best bet, she reasoned, was to take six months off to figure out the follow-up book she was meant to write.  In the meantime she gardened.  And one day, with her fingers dug hard into the soft earth, a single sentence – the sentence that was to become the opening line to the book – simply came to her.

Late one afternoon in the summer of 2006, I found myself in a small village in northern Vietnam, sitting around a sooty kitchen fire with a number of local women whose language I did not speak, trying to ask them questions about marriage.

From there she “took the sentence for a walk across the page,” and proceeded to pen Committed in a mere two months.

While not all of us have the luxury of time or literary advances, as I sat in that overheated ballroom, surrounded by a sea of like-minded New Mexicans, it dawned me on me what a powerful lesson her process presented for living a life in pencil.   There is nothing more important in this life than learning to be YOU – whoever you are.  In fact, is it even something we should have to learn? If we are skilled and equipped to be anything, it’s to be ourselves.  And yet, how difficult it can be to discover and then speak our voice, whether we are writers or not.  It shouldn’t be easier to be someone else, but that is often the case.  Borrowing someone else’s tastes, pleasures, preferences, and aversions is a simple game of mimicry; to truly face who we are, and not who we think we should be, is a lifelong project.

When we are living a life that isn’t attuned to who we are, it’s been my experience that things take forever to manifest themselves.  Everything feels like a Sisyphean task, making it difficult to differentiate between sheer hard work towards a difficult goal and being engaged in the “wrong” thing.  The difference, I think, is that when we are living a life attuned to who we are, things come more easily, more quickly.  While there are bumps in the road, setbacks, and hard uphill battles, the effort feels purposeful.  We feel a deep sense that, while the path is bumpy, it’s the right path to be traveling down.  No amount of construction can reshape the wrong path.

While we talk often here at Life in Pencil about making changes within the parameters of our existing lives, Gilbert’s story teaches us that sometimes life requires us to start over.  If a plan is born from a place that doesn’t feel true or authentic, no amount of “editing” is going to make it right.  Sometimes, major revisions are required.  Sometimes, we have to throw the baby out with the bathwater.  Sometimes, we have to start from scratch.  When Gilbert threw away that first draft, without another story idea in sight, she was facing a problem that needed to be solved, a puzzle of the highest order.  “A puzzle,” she said, “is just a crisis with the volume knob turned down.”  But rather than panicking, she trusted that time – and a vegetable garden – would eventually bring order to the puzzle.  “Problems are like cheap underwear,” a Buddhist monk friend once told her.  “Eventually they wear themselves out.”

And it’s true, isn’t it?  Over time, even the most pernicious problems wear themselves dull and raw, until we genuinely wonder what we were ever worried about in the first place.  Such was the case with Gilbert’s book, and such may be the case with any dilemma, crisis, or life change that you might be facing.  Sometimes, the best thing we can do is take a break and trust that the process will work itself out.  I have always believed that the only way out is through.  Whether we are talking about a failed book project, a career crisis, or a relationship gone awry, there is no easy shortcut or “work around” (as my computer programming husband would say).  We need those seemingly impossible puzzles, those failed attempts, to push us through to the other side.

Just last week I was cleaning out my office, and I discovered a draft of the first essay I had ever written nearly six years ago.  Back then, I was a graduate student in counseling psychology, and a career in writing was the furthest thing from my mind.  And yet, much like Elizabeth Gilbert, I was drying my hair one morning before school when a single line popped into my head.  I immediately scrambled to write it down, and proceeded to skip my morning classes – which I never did – to write an entire essay, which tumbled forth from that one line.  I wasn’t sure where this line had come from, or where it was going, but two years later I submitted that essay to a local writers’ conference.  I remember feeling very proud of my effort, a reflection of the best I could produce at the time.  But reading this essay six years later, while there are lines that are still gems, it struck me that it just wasn’t very good!  The ideas are there, but the execution is sloppy, amateur.  It dawned on me how much I have grown as a writer in that time span, but how necessary it was to write those first stumbling drafts on my way through to becoming a writer.  And when I read this post in another six years, I’m sure I’ll be struck by the same thought.

Gilbert’s friend, an artist, often reminds her, “The creative product is the unidentical twin of the dream you had in your head.”  In other words, what we produce while pursuing the creative process – be it writing a book, baking a pie, or even living life itself – is often a flawed copy of the perfect image we held in our head when we conceived the idea.  It seems to me that the purpose isn’t to create a facsimile but to simply chase after that image to the best of our abilities.  Whatever we produce will never be as perfect as we’d hoped.  But with time and experience, I think our image and the real thing grow closer together.  Just like Gilbert’s book, this blog, as imperfect as it is, couldn’t exist without that first humble essay.  And whatever goal you are working towards in your life couldn’t be accomplished without whatever fumbling efforts you are making right now.

Are you a fan of Eat, Pray, Love (or not)? Have you read Committed?  What lessons do you take away from Gilbert’s process that I have missed?  Do you think that sometimes starting over is the best thing?

Posted by Elizabeth

The cutest ice cream store in Denver!

I’ve never been much of a “weekend getaway” kind of gal.  The amount of planning required to execute a two-day escape takes longer than the trip itself, with travel time eating a significant percentage of the 48-hour respite.  And the whole affair of “getting away” for two days, which is supposed to be restful, usually leaves me feeling more exhausted than if I would have simply stayed at home.  When life is full, weekends are for recuperating.  But when life becomes an exercise in returning emails as soon as they hit your inbox — when you are playing The Waiting Game – a weekend getaway is in order, which is why we spent the past few days in Denver.  I’d always considered the weekend getaway an escape from the stresses of the workweek, a time to chill out in the country, sit in a spa, and murmur just how relaxing getting away is.  But what I came to realize over the last 48 hours, at least for myself, is that weekend getaways are for the times in life when you are bored out of your skull; when you need to shake things up, wrench yourself from your routine, and WAKE UP.

Indeed.

During out time in Denver, we stayed with our friends, Rose and Stu, who have a hip condo in the heart of the trendy Capitol Hill neighborhood.  For 48 hours, I remembered what it was like to live in the pulsating folds of a cosmopolitan city.  We walked to fashionable diners in their neighborhood, lunching on fancy-pants macaroni and cheese.  We strolled the city in search of impossibly fluffy pineapple upside down pancakes.  We hunched towards the candlelight, talking about life in dimly-lit restaurants over chorizo-squash enchiladas, and sparring with our forks over the last bites of award-winning desserts.  We lounged in hipster bars with rough-hewn tables and bizarre 70s cartoons splashed across screens, sending shards of pale light over the patrons.  This is not my life: it was once, and it might be again someday.  But it’s not my life right now, and that’s what made the weekend so fun; it was a chance to live in an alternate universe for two days, to getaway from whatever “normal” dictates my life.  And perhaps that is the very point of the getaway: to try on a different identity for a few days, to reflect what we might like for our lives, if only in a small dose.

Denver's ugliest sculpture, which I referred to as "a steaming pile of organs." Bonus: it lights up at night!

I’ve always equated “weekend getaway” with “forced rest and relaxation,” and for the past several years the weekend getaway has never appealed to me because my life was so overflowing with activity that the idea of adding more activity into my free time felt completely unnecessary.  I don’t think a weekend getaway will ever be for relaxation; I can do that more easily at home.  But now I see the utility of a weekend getaway in order to jazz up life a bit, and with this definition in mind, the time is ripe for weekend getaways.  For the first time in a long time, my life is kind of boring.  I’m not exactly complaining, but I’m also not used to this feeling of boredom.  I am accustomed to activity and purpose guiding my days, and, without it, I’m seeking action in other realms of my life – the realms that have traditionally been dedicated to relaxation.  My relationship to the weekend getaway has changed because the circumstances of my life have changed.  I imagine that city dwellers find retreat in the country or some otherwise diabolically opposite situation of their regular lives at homes.  As for me, I’d take a getaway to a bustling city over a spa-filled weekend any day.

And you know what?  For the whole weekend I almost forgot that I was playing The Waiting Game.  Almost.

What do you think of weekend getaways?  Are they for activity or relaxation?  How do you make the most of your getaways?  What do you use your weekends for:  recreation, relaxation, or productivity?