Travel Plans

I'm noticing something interesting about myself.  When I know that I'm going to be traveling somewhere, but the plans aren't finalized, I feel rather unsettled.  For example:  early last year we decided that we were going to go to Maui for our honeymoon.  I immediately started pricing out flights, rental cars, and both hotels that we wanted to stay at.  And long before we had any of the wedding details finalized, I had booked our entire honeymoon.

In March, I'm going to New Jersey for Mod 4 of my iPEC training.  I've known this fact since probably November, but iPEC didn't have the exact location information available until last week, so I didn't feel comfortable booking anything.  Last Tuesday they (finally!) sent out an e-mail with all the information in it.  My heart leapt with joy, and I was immediately on the phone booking a hotel room and on the computer booking myself a flight (thankfully it's a hotel near the airport, so I won't need a car...).  Once that was done, I felt an immense sense of peace.  For months I had carried it around with me as this uncertain thing that wasn't completely planned or booked.

For the past few weeks, we've been talking about this conference that Donovan is going to attend in San Francisco at the beginning of March.  That week happens to coincide with a time that his parents are going to be in San Jose (they live on the big island, Hawaii).  We've been tentatively planning on going up for the whole week and seeing my family, his parents, and some other family friends, but we had no solid plans.  What I'm realizing is that these kinds of un-finalized plans just circle around in my head like a major to-do that I'm always aware of and want to do something about.  So today Donovan talked to his boss and found out all the details and we picked our flights and sent his to the appropriate person at work, and I booked mine directly through Southwest.  Yay!  Now we're really going, and I can have some peace and quiet in my brain about it.

I think it's going to be very useful for me to know about and understand this pattern in my brain.  It may also help Donovan understand why I'm always asking so many questions about our future travel plans and why I'm always so eager to finalize those plans.  It literally creates space in my head!

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