Week 21: Not Quite the End

Week 21: Your challenge post highlights and what you’ve learned during this challenge

The Travel Challenge ends here but Travel Tuesday will still live on though. I have plenty of other posts I can fill on Tuesdays with such as:

• Mocha’s Travelling Photos
• More travel stories. Based on a lot of my posts I can certainly branch out.

• Interview stories featuring other bloggers who work full-time jobs not related to blogging. It’s one of my favorite posts to put together because I get to interview different bloggers from all over the world. I’ve lived in Southern California for most of my life and I meet a lot of transplants who move to SoCal for greener pastures. I like to ask “how’s it like living in [fill in the blank]?” I get these perplexed look to why I am so curious. I’ve been posting these interviews on Mondays for Motivation Monday, but I think it is fitting Travel Tuesday.

During this Travel Blogging Challenge I was surprised to learn I’ve traveled more than I thought. It was nice to pull some old pictures from the vault and give them some life.

“I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list.”

I learned through this travel challenge…and even through my travelling to not rush and see every country in the world. When I was in my 20s, I thought I got to go to this place, this place, and this place. But then I thought, if I really went to the places I wanted to go in my 20s, what is there left for me to do?

I drafted overly ambitious itineraries where there would goign through multiple cities and countries over the course of 2 days each. Then I revised it to something more realistic and we’d go on vacation and I’d wish we spend a few days more per stop.

“Rest and be thankful.”

Through this challenge, I’ve been an aggressive champion of taking breaks from work — whether it is taking a 15 minute break after every 90 minutes of work, a few hours of mental health breaks, or a few days off for vacation because you deserve it. The younger generation vacation shames because they praise work martyrdom to impress the upper management. Last Friday was my recent hit of vacation-shaming by a younger co-worker when she found out I was going on a week-long vacation. She goes “wow that’s a long time you may not have access to your work e-mail when you’re away.” First of all, it’s just one week (I wish it was two weeks) and second, it’s likely I won’t have access to my e-mail.

This same co-worker is going to Seattle to visit a friend on Friday and asked if she could remote in for work. Sure technology is great to be more connected to your job, but at this point we’re going too far. I was in Seattle for VACATION in May and did not remote in for a single meeting because it’s my vacation. Please cut the work addiction and take your PTO. When people are taking their time off, please respect it and face the fact they’re likely NOT going to respond.

Read more posts from the Travel Blogging Challenge:

Week 1: Your Favorite Travel Photo of You and Intro
Week 2: Little Known Travel Tips
Week 3: Funny Travel Story
Week 4: Travel Misadventures
Week 5: Top three cultural foods
Week 6: Unusual Travel Activities and Photos
Week 7: Inspiration for traveling
Week 8: 5 Favorite Blogs
Week 9: Gross/disgusting travel stories
Week 10: Best adventures while traveling
Week 11: What’s in my backpack?
Week 12: Happy and Sad Travel Stories
Week 13: Unique Cultures Encountered 
Week 14: Top 3 Travel Destinations
Week 15: Travel Regrets
Week 16: Scary and Cool Travel Stories
Week 17: Things to Purge
Week 18: Humbling things learned from traveling
Week 19: Travel Confessions
Week 20: Travel bucket list (countries/activities)

Who else is doing the challenge?

• Journey Through the Trees – Victoria
• Wandering Outside the Box – Winta
• Simply Emily – Emily
• Benjamin Lessard – Benjamin