My Facebook status updates have started to annoy even me lately.
I must come off as so pretentious and flaunting. Nearly every post mentions being in a different city or country, doing something that probably seems completely absurd and annoying. I imagine some of my friends have already stopped reading my updates entirely, and have completely abandoned this blog months ago.
But here’s the problem – my normal isn’t normal anymore. We’ve been international for six months now, and traveling for nine. Which means that when I sit down to make small talk with strangers or try to talk to friends on the phone, I struggle a bit. My everyday stories no longer involve wedding photography, yoga students, or dinner parties like they used to. Now, whenever we are having conversations with other people on the road, my stories always seem to start with phrases like “When we were hiking in New Zealand…” or “So we were on this Chicken Bus in Nicaragua…” or involve statements like “If you think this is good, you should have tried the mojitos in Cuba,” and “Tikal wasn’t nearly as spectacular at sunrise as Machu Picchu.”
When we are talking to people we’ve just met, I imagine this comes across as some sort of travel related competition – as though I am trying to one up their stories of traveling in Indonesia for three weeks, or somehow looking down on them for only having a month in South America. I’m not, I swear. I just don’t have any stories that don’t involve travel these days. And I have so very many of them, it seems like there is always a story to tell that is relevant to the conversation.
When I’m on the phone with friends from home, I try extra hard not to tell stories that involve dolphins and double rainbows and other insane (but true) tales. The last thing I want to do is discourage a friend from sharing a story about their life that they might think I’ll deem as “boring” because my life is so “interesting.” No! I want to hear the “boring” stories! I want to hear all the stories! We’re so isolated from the day to day life of our friends and family that when I get on the phone with one of them it’s because I want to hear about what is going on for them. The last thing I want to do is spend the whole conversation telling travel tales (hence the purpose of this blog.)
So please, bear with me. In trying to feel connected to the rest of the world, I share what’s going on for us. My hope is that it is somehow interesting, but know that I’m not trying to be boastful or obnoxious. I’m really not a crazy travel snob – my “normal” is just weird these days.
Don’t beat yourself up. If you’re taking the time to talk to someone from home, chances are it’s someone who knows better than to think you are a pretentious travel snob. Luckily for you, I can talk enough for both of us and I have a never-ending reserve of kid stories and poop stories (or sometimes a kid poop story). :) Buuuuuuuuuut, I’d much rather hear about double rainbows you see while sitting pool-side in the living room than talk about sitting in my living room watching dog hair floating like tumbleweed down the hall and brooding over our 1 degree forecast (oh but don’t worry, it’s IL so it’ll be a balmy 45 by thursday). Now I’m depressed. More sunrise stories please. :)