Maybe I'm Not Cut Out For This

The rough start to our trip has me questioning our nomad lifestyle.

Only 24 hours from the time our plane took off, I was in a puddle of tears.

Maybe I’m not made for this travel life, I thought.

Little did I know, everything would continue to get worse before it got better.

We’ve officially been in the Dominican Republic for 3 days and to say it got off to a rough start would be an understatement.

So why write about it?

Because I look at these Freedom Diary entries as a reflection of my experience, both the good and the bad.

One thing I want to be conscious of is not to paint my experience as this glamorous, jet setting lifestyle where all my bills are covered and I don’t worry about a thing.

Stuff still sucks, sometimes.

So today, I’m keeping it real and sharing some thoughts on what we have learned so far from our trip to the Dominican Republic.

But quickly, if you are new to the blog (welcome!!), my husband and I hit financial independence by 33 years old and now travel the world part time with our two young girls.

The Freedom Diaries is the story of how we did it.

Right now, we are on a 13 week slow living trip to the Dominican Republic!

The First Mistake

I’m a part of many Facebook groups, both for travel and for world schooling for our kids.

There was a mom that posted saying she was nervous about flying with her kids to Italy from the U.S..

In full transparency, I would be too - her kids were 5, 3, 2 and 1 year old twins.

After perusing the comments, one common tip surfaced from other parents - take the night flight.

According to these parents, it was great because your kids would sleep through the flight and you wouldn’t have to provide full time entertainment.

I was sold.

We booked our trip to the Dominican - a 10:35 pm flight from Vancouver to Toronto, followed by a 4 hour layover and another 4 hour flight.

To make a long story short, the kids slept 2 hours that entire night after being awake all day.

Flynn and I barely slept - my Oura ring clocked a total of 1h48m of sleep split up over 3 naps, including one on an airport bench.

I was experiencing vertigo spells from exhaustion. The room would unexpectedly spin.

By the time we reached the Dominican, I was nauseous, cranky, hungry and beyond tired.

The kids were in a constant state of meltdown.

The lesson learned? Red eye flights and my family are a no-go.

The First Night Meltdown

When we reached our Airbnb, we wanted to shower and go straight to sleep.

Except there were only 3 ratty towels and the shower leaked all over the bathroom floor, turning it into a dangerous slipping hazard.

It turns out, the dryer was broken and our linens had to be sent out and didn’t make it back in time.

The air in the room was damp.

Normally, I would have been able to tolerate this but I was already on edge and stressed.

So I messaged our host and went to sleep.

One hour later, my 2 year old woke up from a nightmare and after settling her back to sleep, I burst into tears.

It all flooded out.

Being in a new country where I didn’t speak the language.

The exhaustion. Hours upon hours of crying kids.

The culture shock of coming to a new country and staying locally instead of at a resort.

The new. The change. The missing home.

Having no home to go back to.

Sometimes it really hits hard, this nomadic lifestyle.

The lack of roots, the sense of longing I feel to have a place to hold our family and our stuff.

Feeling out of our routine, changing our environment, supporting our kids through constant change.

It can be a lot. Sometimes I just want to go home… but that doesn’t exist anymore.

And it all came out in tears.

Maybe I wasn’t cut out for this lifestyle.

Maybe I need a bit more consistency, predictability, and comfort.

Maybe finding new homes every few weeks and living in new countries isn’t perfect for us.

So while wiping my tears in the darkness of our Airbnb room, Flynn and I reconsidered our life.

What if we spent the next year or two travelling to the top spots on our bucket list, and then going forward, spend one trip per year in a familiar space, and one in a new place?

That way, we could enjoy the slow living experience without having to navigate an entirely new environment every time.

While we haven’t made any decisions, we’ve decided to take it one trip at a time.

We’d sleep off this really rough travel day and settle in.

Except I wasn’t prepared for what was coming next.

The Second Night Meltdown

Our first full day in the Dominican Republic was spent exploring on foot.

With only 6 hours of sleep, we were jet lagged but determined to have a better day.

The town we are in is beautiful and we had a delicious lunch on the beach with our feet in the sand.

It was a nice first day, and I could slowly feel the stress of the past days melting away.

I was remembering what it felt like to enjoy the earth underfoot, the sound of the waves, the friendly smiles from everyone we passed.

Maybe, just maybe, I could do this.

I went to sleep, ready to live slowly…

…but at 4am, my stomach began to swirl.

Something wasn’t right.

Within 30 minutes, I was ridiculously sick with some sort of food poisoning.

I couldn’t keep anything down and was curled up in a ball on the cold tile floor of the bathroom.

At 6am, I could hear coughing and heaving from the kids room.

The baby was crying.

Tenley and I had come down with food poisoning and spent the entire day sick together.

It was chaos, a really rough start to the trip.

After 12 hours of misery, the fog started to lift.

I could sit up, even go outside for a bit.

That was yesterday and today, I’m slowly coming out of my shell.

My energy is still low and I have zero appetite, but I enjoyed a beach walk and dip in the ocean this morning with my family.

Every hour, a little better.

The Reminder

A friend sent me a DM on Instagram after I posted that I was offline and sick.

She said,

“I hope you are feeling better. It’s always the 50/50, isn’t it?”

She was reminding me of a belief that I held, and it was beautiful timing for this reminder.

Life’s experiences are 50/50.

Half of the time, it’s great and you experience the good stuff, like excitement, joy, accomplishment, gratitude.

The other 50 is negative. Fear, worry, anxiety, stress.

No matter how you design your life, no matter what your circumstances are, you always get 50/50.

With trust comes betrayal.

With gratitude comes scarcity.

With anxiety comes contentment.

With overwhelm comes productivity.

You can change your job, your financial status, your friends, your relationship, heck you can even retire at 33 and live in the Dominican for the winter…

…and you’ll still get 50/50.

It’s not something you can outrun.

It’s a belief system through which I see the world.

Why? Because when I’m 72 hours into a dream trip, exhausted, dizzy, throwing up and missing home, this is just the other half of the experience.

Nothing has gone wrong.

It can’t be good all of the time. Without the negative experiences and emotions, we wouldn’t truly appreciate the good ones.

So as I sit here, beachside writing this diary entry, I hope it serves as a reminder to all of us.

Life is not meant to be fully happy.

It’s the human experience to feel it all.

So while I hope this can be a reminder to you that feeling bad doesn’t mean something has gone wrong…

I also hope it reminds you that I’m still a human and stuff still really sucks sometimes.

I wish to strip away the glamour of Instagram worthy photos and a travel nomad lifestyle and show you all sides of what it is.

Mostly good, a lot of discomfort, food poisoning and walks on the beach.

A solid mix of 50/50, whether I’m in Vancouver or under a palm tree.

So while I may or may not be cut out for this lifestyle, I do know I will adapt.

And for now? I’ll take it.

Tanessa