Preparation Is the Key, Or Is It?

Me and @escapist are the type of people who prepare for anything and everything well before any travels, and during travels. Come rain, hail, sunshine or zombie apocalypse, we got it covered. We have backups for backups and duplicate tickets. Reservation numbers, addresses, bus routes and timetables are all figured out and memorised in the form of a song like in pre school. You know, just in case all four electronic appliances get stolen or break suddenly and we have to rely on our brains like some cave men, how arcade! Passport, phone and money checks happening every 10 minutes to make sure nothing gets left behind. We pack everything well in advance and communicate about the activities we might attend and need to prepare for, and decide who brings the shampoo and which one takes the toothpaste. I’m surprised we haven’t bought our own parachutes for the flights…

By preparing for every possible scenario, and saying that we do this in order to not have to stress out about anything when we travel, what actually ends up happening is that we stress about EVERYTHING!

This time something is different.

I don’t know what happened but we booked the flights at the end of last year, got the hotel a couple months back, packed and checked the bus schedule on the previous evening, without spending really any time planning and coordinating during or in between. We haven’t stressed about anything, just been having laughs and chilling all the way, and killing the dzone chat with our horrible humour.

We discussed about this yesterday evening when we both noticed that WOW, the preparations for this holiday has been very different from our norm, and it feels so GOOOD!

So why have we been stressing and planning so much on every little trip we have taken before? I truly do not know the answer to that. We both are great problem solvers and we know that what ever happens, we can easily come up with a new plan on the spot, no doubt. We have worked in high stress jobs and we don’t crack under pressure. We always bounce the ideas off of each other and end up with a good solid strategy we both agree on, and execute it with 100% success rate.

We like some luxury but we are definitely not princesses either, and are not afraid to get our hands dirty, so why have we acted like measuring how much dry shampoo one needs for a weeks stay is an important part in packing!? We are not afraid to admit it’s unnecessary, stupid and hilarious. The packing preparations are not even about saving money once in the actual destination, if we need something, we really do not give a shit how much it costs, that we can worry about later.

On our prior excursions, we haven’t stressed during the actual stay in the new town, but we have spend waaaaay too much energy and time for meaningless preparations and during transitions. _{Though, I do think that one should always be prepared for the zombie apocalypse.}

Agains all odds, the bff is so relaxed that she is sleeping next to me on the plane, she never sleeps on busses or trains! It’s usually me who does that.

PS. In all it’s irony, I was wearing a t-shirt stating “overthinking”, as I wrote this on the plane.