As much as I love adventure and travel, I relish and find great pleasure in resting, relaxing, and sometimes just doing absolutely nothing.  With such a stressful career, I rest to protect my body and mind.  Somedays I find that I need extra down time.  So, as exciting as being an adventurer is, travel can be tiring, and exhausting.  What I’ve learned to do with my adventures is to let them pour into me vs. my being completed drained from all of them.  Since being a travel enthusiast is not how I earn my living, and my life as a traveler is an avocation, my travels are usually a welcome reprieve from life transitions.

The best part I’ve learned about life is sometimes, the travel the journey you could say taken, requires no packing, no planning, or navigating at all.  Some of my most welcomed travels rest with me carving out a lay low time.  Time where I go to my quiet, peaceful place in my home.  It’s there that I rest my head on my pillow, and I get my wits about me.

Some, are filled with adrenaline…always on the move!  Not me so much.  Sometimes I just like the absence of silence all around me, finding and discovering the peace of inner stillness.  In those moments, I experience the peace of not thinking.  A true extrovert I am. I love people.  I’m not isolative at all.  However, I’ve learned to recognize the comfort of my own company.  I’ve learned too to be happiest when I’ve filled my cup first with my own sense of peace, joy and worth.  It’s when I do this, that I find that my special brand of happiness is contagious, giving me the best opportunity to spread my wealth of happiness all around.

To care for oneself, is not selfish.  To do so is in fact, the gift that keeps on giving.  I give happiness away and in turn increase my own!  Be your own life’s cartographer.  You’ll be much happier that way.