Bevin Farrand says, “Take the Damn Trip”

May 27, 2022

So I know people may be surprised at how I can travel so much. How I manage to do all the things. And here is what I am telling you – you just make up your mind to do it and then you take inspired actions every day toward that goal. This doesn’t mean it happens all at once, or even quickly, but each day you ask yourself how do I move the dial on this dream a little closer to accomplished.

Maybe that means having $20 a pay deducted from your paycheck and reallocated to a travel fund (at the typical 26 pay periods a year that is $520 which is a pretty nice domestic ticket somewhere in the US). If you have a nomadic spirit like me, the following sites could help get you started (I actually have never used the first two, but writing this was a reminder to me that I probably should; I forgot I bookmarked them like a decade ago lol).

There is plenty of research out there that says experiences makes us happier than things. Check out Ilya Pozin’s article “The Secret to Happiness? Spend Money on Experiences, Not Things” and my own family’s tradition of gifting experiences.

Maybe that means asking someone who is living the type of life you envy to meet you for coffee and share their story with you. How they got started in their journey, where they failed, what advice they have. In one of the sections in my “How to Live & Write Creatively” class I talk about learning from the masters. I am always amazed at how freely we take money advice from people who are broke, career advice from people who hate their jobs, etc. One of the problems I have with Catholicism (I went to Catholic grade school) was giving a human, as equally culpable of sin, the power to absolve me from mine, and/or to counsel on topics such as marriage and childhood when they take a vow of celibacy!) Instead of asking people who aren’t living the types of lives we want for advice, perhaps we should seek out those teachers who are. Here are some of my experiences in making the awkward ask (it has usually ended well for me).

So circling back to the beginning and the advice of the headline – the harsh reality of this life is that we don’t know when it is going to end or how, and so waiting for next month or next year or next decade to do the things I want to do is not an option for me. Friend and Coach Bevin Farrand shared with me her heartbreaking and inspirational story about what led her to “take the damn trip” in a time that seemed all wrong for the taking. And why, 5 days after returning home, she discovered just how much that trip would mean. You can learn more about her experience by listening to the podcast Ep. #93 Widows Like Us: An Interview with Bevin Farrand.

I am not someone who ever needs extra encouragement to travel; I booked two international trips this week alone, still not entirely sure how the logistics will all play out. However, I committed to the trip, or at least my credit card did, and so now I go! I’ve never once, not even for a teeny tiny second have regretted dollars spent on experiences. The stories and the memories that come out of them last for years – they are told over breakfast tables, and as bedtime stories, and around firepits and family bbq’s for decades.

I have been doing a lot of promos around the two retreats I’m co-hosting this summer: Rooted and The Fairytale Retreat. And I’m not saying these retreats our your version of “tak[ing] the damn trip,” but maybe the are? If that is, in fact, the case you still have a little time to commit to the experience and book. If they are not, I encourage you to think about what is and in the words of the great sage Rumi, “to respond to every call that excites your spirit.”