honestly, i think i just got sick of waiting.
waiting for leave to get approved waiting for someone to text back waiting for friends to actually commit to plans waiting until life felt more together
at some point it hit me that if i kept waiting for someone to come with me, i was going to miss half my life. so i started going anyway.
first it was small stuff. a winery weekend alone in the hunter. a concert in canberra where i was easily the youngest person there by about forty years. camping solo on a dairy farm near bermagui. driving to random country towns because someone once told me there was a good pub there.
then somehow it became bigger things. eighty-one countries. four months in south america. night buses. tiny wine bars in buenos aires. watching sunsets in uruguay where everyone actually claps when the sun disappears. drinking mate in parks. getting emotionally attached to random cellar door dogs.
and honestly? i still don’t fully know what i’m doing.
i had an engagement break down halfway through all of this too. which probably explains a lot.
one minute i thought my life was heading in one direction — the house, the relationship, the version of adulthood you think you’re meant to want — and then suddenly it just... wasn’t.
everyone expects you to either completely collapse or immediately “move on.” instead, i started booking more trips. i learnt how to sit at tables alone. i learnt that loneliness and freedom can feel weirdly similar.
i don’t think solo travel fixed my life. but i think it gave me myself back a little.
social media shows solo travel as either hyper-glamorous eat pray love fantasy, or something terrifying and lonely. the truth is usually somewhere in the middle. sometimes it’s drinking semillon in a robe watching kangaroos outside your airbnb thinking my life is actually kind of ridiculous. sometimes it’s sitting on a night bus in another country questioning every decision you’ve ever made because you haven’t slept in 36 hours and google maps has stopped working.
both are part of it.
this journal is probably going to be a mix of:
travel stories solo weekends away wineries & country towns dating disasters thoughts from long drives accidental life lessons whatever else
mostly though, i think this is for people who are in-between things. between relationships, between cities, between versions of themselves. people trying to build a life that feels expansive before everything is figured out.
i work in sales during the week — quoting windows and doors, targets, inboxes, phone calls. practical and busy. and then outside of that i’ve somehow become someone who books flights because a place “feels right.” someone who has been on 74 first dates and still somehow believes in romance.
i used to think doing things alone meant i was failing at life a little. now i think it means i trust myself.
anyway. glad you’re here. stay awhile— jen