"Introvert Talks" is meant to be a new initiative or theme, where I myself as an introvert, just talk about reflections and thoughts about my life, or maybe share more personal stuff. :)
This is my weekly post under this "Introvert Talks" theme and let's see where it takes me and us.
Do you plan your vacations meticulously or be spontaneous and go with the flow?
In life, I am quite a planner. I like to plan activities for my days, I have weekly plans, monthly plans, and multi year plans for my life and future. I haven't been met someone who goes to such extent as myself, but perhaps, I find a sense of comfort and security that I have plans to fall back on. Of course, the downside of being so uptight about plans is I struggle to adapt to unforeseen circumstances and I sometimes panic when schedules change. While it's both a strength and a weakness, over the years, I have tried to work on this aspect of my personality and I think I have become slightly more spontaneous these days, and I try to take last minute changes in my stride.
Back to travel, I used to plan my vacations meticulously. Maybe it's because I am just a planner, or I want to maximise my vacation time, or a combination of both. Over time, I have travelled with different friends, I have learnt that some people travel quite spontaneously, and actually, the world didn't end and it can still be quite enjoyable. I used to remember people saying, if you fail to plan, then you plan to fail, but somehow when it comes to travel, sometimes it can be fun to get "lost" in cities and discovered new places as well.
In my recent break, I spent about a week in Seoul, South Korea, and I decided to take it easy and let almost the entire trip be spontaneous. I do have to confess that I had some places that were "must visits" so I only diligently planned 1 day out of the 8 days there. The rest of the days, I really "challenged" myself to let go. The primary reason was I wanted to try to experience my spontaneous side of myself and travelling seems like a safe comfort zone to do so. After all, what's the worst that could happen? The secondary reason was unfortunately this trip happened during an extremely hectic period of my work, and the days prior the trip, I was so exhausted everyday and I just didn't had the energy to do research.
So how did it turn out? It turned out perfectly fine. Haha.
I spent quite a fair bit of time chilling at different cafes and enjoying bread, pastries, cakes and sipping matcha, lattes, herbal teas, fruit juices and it was quite therapeutic to be able to slow things down in a foreign land, to just breathe and admire scenery like this.
And weirdly, a part of me seemed to enjoy this. One, I think it takes a lot of effort and time out of preparing for the trip. Two, I didn't have to rush from one place to another, as though I was completing some checklist. In turn, I returned from the trip feeling well rested and refreshed, and perhaps, I should consider this approach for my future trips as well.
Perhaps I am not a crazy planner all the time after all. :P
