Goodness it saddens me to share this last Spain & Portugal travel post with y’all. This trip had felt so far away and now it all has come and gone so quickly. I wish I could say that every second of this trip was a dream and I wish I could say that this trip met every expectations I had, but in all honesty it didn’t. Now that might sound bad and I don’t want y’all to think we took this trip for granted for a single second because we didn’t. We feel unbelievably grateful for this trip, as it taught us some amazing and beautiful things that I never expected to discover. It was a trip that pushed and challenged us in very unexpected ways. I had very different goals and objectives going in to this trip, such as feeling I would see the light at the end of the tunnel, or this trip would fix all the problems and fears we have as business owners. We hoped that the time spent away would inspire something in us, like all of our other trips have. We also hoped we would complete our new Wild Measure website and feel this insane clarity about the future of Wild Measure. That being said you may understand better why we felt this trip was not just wine and siestas, as we expected.
The views, the food, the company, the spaces, the rainy days, and the sunny days were all top notch and I have not one single complaint about what we experienced in our travels. I wouldn’t trade all of that and in fact I feel so fulfilled by the experience of traveling to a new place, but I think Mike and I both walked away feeling what we hoped would come of this trip, did not come in the ways we expected or planned for it to happen. I always want to be honest here. Not in a way that seems to beg for your sympathy for us or anything, but in a way that reveals something behind the curtain that is real and true about life, work, travel, and creating. Thus, why I feel this post warrants us getting honest about how this trip transformed us in ways we never expected.
Our last few days in Madrid, were not meant for us to tour around the city, but instead meant to reflect and take a moment to absorb where we had just been. I have never done this for a trip in the past, activly taken the time to reflect on a trip before returning from it. Instead of the hum of the plane home has acted as the soundtrack to my thoughts and reflections., we made a point to simply let us have time to take it all in.
We had booked an amazing apartment on the 5th floor in an old old building with a gorgeous view over the city. It was the perfect setting for our last days, to relax and disappear for just a few more days before coming home. Minus the hike up to the top floor this apartment, it was pure perfection. We slept with the windows open every night and felt the breeze coming across the city. I couldn’t have chosen a more perfect place to dream, drink great wine, and let everything sink in for us.
Throughout our time I felt I was personally working through things below the surface. Thing I never felt would surface or would never foresee coming to light. They are not deep and weird things, but simply truths I had not connected to within my head about myself, our marriage, and our work. Mike and I each have different stories about what came out in this trip, but for me I had lost clear sight of what I really wanted. In all the shuffling to make it all happen, stay on top of it all, and everything else that comes with owning a business, I had lost track of where we were headed. For the first day I started the blog and the studio, I have always been the steering force in our business and in developing our next steps. Mike is amazing at listening to what I want to accomplish and figuring out how that can integrate in to our business model, and to find a way to turn it into a sustainable revenue model in some way. I had no idea how much of our stress and anxiety about our business, was on Mike and how much of that stemmed from my lack of vision and direction. It was not that I was not taking it seriously enough, I had simply lost the passion and clarity that we had started the studio with. It took this trip for me to remember who I am, what I want, and what truly is my passion.
Within this discovery in our last few days, I felt a sense of desire to come home. Not that I wasn’t enjoying the trip, but because I felt the adventures I really wanted were resting in my head and involved investing more time in the studio. Interestingly enough Mike was feeling the same as me. Thus, the late night wine drinking and waning sunsets lead to some really honest conversations about how our style of adventure was beginning to shift. Not totally shifting, sure we both love hopping a plane and seeing new places, but for the first time we were both interested in settling down and growing some deep roots. Maybe it was the sense that we had just moved somewhere new and there is an adventure at home we’d yet to explore. I am not sure, but this trip left us feeling our travel bug had been laid to rest, for a a couple months at least. I mean, one of my earliest memories as a child was having a giant floor book of the world and saying to myself I want to see it all. So the worldly adventures are not over but our idea of adventure is shifting. This is a pretty crazy feeling that I am honestly not so sure about haha.
Now don’t think we won’t be taking more adventures and travel here because our soul and work still requires it. We have clients all over and feel it is important to be onsite with them at times. However, I think outside of work travel I am probably settled for the time being. What I do know is that I have walked away from this trip feeling extremely passionate about being intentional in life. Intentional in every way. Whether that be our work, our connection with our clients, the blog, the food we eat, how I care for my body, how our home feels, how our office feels, how I can be a good boss to our new employee, and more than ever be more present in relationships at every level. Whether it is with Mike, my family, my friends, or neighbors (I mean the old lady across the street has some great stories I love hearing when I walk the dogs…pure gold!). I walked away realizing the most important things in life are the people you surround yourself with and what you put into a relationship you get out. I have failed a lot in this area of life, and you know this if you are my friend and it takes me days to respond to texts and to get me on the phone might be impossible even for my parents or brother. This trip I think simply set me straight in terms of what matters most and that what matters most is what makes me me and over the past year is a person I have truly learned to value and love. So in many ways we did get what we were looking for out of this trip, just not exactly how we were expecting to get it.
Too many times we set out on trips looking for answers and expect them to some how be laid in the sand or bottled in to a bottle of wine, when really travel simply will only bring you to a place where you have to be real with yourself. There were many days we don’t show us sweating hauling bags up staircases in the subway, or the time we got lost and Mike and I got in a fight right in front of poor Wes and Linda… those are the things that bring you face-to-face with who you are. Many times these things lay dormant in the day-to-day. Sometimes the answers we are looking for are already there, and have been for a while, but changing the scenery and removing the everyday comforts allow you turned it all upside down and allow it all to make sense.
I couldn’t be more thankful for this trip no matter the up’s or the down’s, because though this trip was never what I expected it was everything I needed. Walking away, I feel as if it all feels clearer. Although our website did not get built the way we had hoped, we walked away with some insight and direction we would have never found had we not gotten to the depths of ourselves and come out the other side. We feel very excited about the future and where everything is headed, now more than ever.
On to the next adventures, wherever they may lead us. Whether they involve a plane or simply will happen right back in the offices of Wild Measure we are not sure, but isn’t that half the fun anyway?
