Finding Balance While Traveling
Is it Possible to Work, Learn & Enjoy the Moment?
The Journey Ahead
I’m about to set out on a six-week journey with my son, who’s eight. We’re both excited, but at the same time, as a single parent, and one whose business needs some TLC, I’ve been in danger of feeling like this trip is a hassle rather than a joy. I really don’t want to feel this way.
I have thought hard about this. Our trip will be quite hectic time-wise, with visits to family and friends across four countries, as well as fulfilling a few dreams of my son’s (going to Old Trafford, seeing the Eiffel Tower, visiting every skatepark going) plus surprises thrown in (Legoland, the Paris St Germain football stadium). You get the picture.
Apart from our initial flight from Africa to Europe, we’ll be taking the train everywhere we go. This feels good to me. To know we’ll have long stretches just relaxing through the Spanish countryside, or through my first travel-love, Germany, helps me plan our time.
Setting Goals
Being a single parent, I know the importance of understanding my limits. If I break those limits, the first person to suffer is my kid. But, within these limits, it’s okay to use some of this time for my own projects. My son is doing the same.
We each have three areas of focus.
For me, I have decided two will be business-related (working on course materials and marketing), while one is for my soul (writing).
For him, one is my choice — education by stealth (he will be writing something every day. I’m hoping he’ll hardly notice). The other two are his choice. One is that he wants to take his football skills ‘to the next level’, and the other he’s yet to decide on. I’ve enrolled him in a week’s soccer course in Brighton and he is thrilled.
Slow Traveling as a Lifestyle
The basic idea of unbroken family time - switching off and being fully present — is hugely important. However, when you don’t live the 9–5 all the time, these sacred pinnacles of two or three weeks away with the family each year, where no-one mentions work and everyone remembers who they really are, become less relevant.
When seeking advice on how to organise my time on this trip (I am currently stuck in a bottomless gorge between digital organisation and paper diaries), two interesting things arose.
Firstly, someone I hugely respect suggested that my child shouldn’t have to write, as they need time to get away from education and just relax. I absolutely agree — if he has, say, one week off from school. But he has nine.
He hates writing because he associates it with school. I want him to begin to comprehend the joy and creativity that writing will offer him in his lifetime, quite separate from school expectations. Now is the time.
Someone else said that I need to be fully present, because time away from the trip is time my child loses with me. Yet we have six weeks! Our last holiday was four months ago, and we’re aiming for a month away at Christmas. I think, actually, my child may crave a little ‘him time’!
Like Lines in the Sand
So, here are a couple of travel and life metaphors to illustrate the results of my thinking.
These traditional walled boundaries about the “sanctity of the holiday” are like waves on the shore to us.
We come prepared, with bucket, spade, suncream and swimmers, but if it doesn’t lend itself to sandcastles or swimming, we’ll just have an ice-cream and enjoy the view.
We’ll use the calm and predictability of the trains to move towards our own figurative destinations.
We’ll make a list of the best things we experience in Paris, and write grateful, heartfelt notes to our friends on leaving them.
We can focus early morning, then spend the rest of the day absorbing the place we’re in.
We’ll live in our hearts and our heads, fully and intentionally, skating through streets and parks, refusing to compartmentalize our lives.
