Have You Ever Wanted to Run Away?

Hello Love and Laundry Readers,

Have you ever wanted to run away?

I know. Silly question, right?

I think everyone wants to run away sometimes, like my friend who came home from an exhausting business trip to discover that all three of her children had both headlice and the flu.

There are days and months and seasons of life when our responsibilities feel more like burdens than blessings. And when that happens, I think of that old TV commercial. I want to press my wrist to my beleaguered brow and moan, "Calgon, take me away."

Well friends, I finally had my Calgon moment. In January, I ran away on a cruise ship, courtesy of my friend Susan Whitson, an old friend who is now the founder of Whitson Travel. I told her needed to do some research on cruise ships for a book I'm working on. (Faithful readers of Love and Laundry will eventually find out why this arduous research was necessary).

I'd never been on a cruise, so Susan found the perfect ship and also supplied her five closest girlfriends from college who happened to be booked on the same cruise. We even did a book club meeting on the ship.

The World's Greatest Husband made this trip possible by valiantly offering to stay in the rear with the gear (i.e. the kids and the dog) so I could go all by myself.

I'm still a little stunned by this breathtaking act of escapism. Moms don't do anything by themselves, except maybe worry.

It was honestly one of the best weeks I've ever had.

I wrote. I read books. I ate...a lot. I binged Season 7 of Friends, the one where Phoebe gives birth to triplets.

People brought breakfast to my room each morning on a silver tray, and I felt like a heroine in a regency romance novel. And then I drank my coffee while gazing at the ocean in silence.

The whole thing was so very Calgon.

So as I wrap up today's newsletter, I'm trying to find a moral to this story. And I'm realizing that Go Float Around the Ocean While Eating Really Good Desserts and Then Call It Research isn't exactly a moral, per se.

But I will say this. Before I went on my Arduous Research Cruise, I was tired, and I was having a very hard time writing this next book. And after the cruise, I have both energy and ideas again. And I know those two things are directly connected to rest and relaxation. Our brains can't work if our bodies are tired, and our bodies can't re-charge when our brains are overwhelmed.

I almost didn't go on this trip, for all the usual reasons. I'm too busy. It costs too much. What if my kids can't find their school uniforms without me? What if someone forgets to pick someone up somewhere at a certain time? And most importantly, what if the dog faints from separation anxiety?

The dog almost did pass out from separation anxiety. But everyone else managed just fine. The whole exercise made me realize that I'm always full of excuses when it it's time to try something new, even if that new thing is a lot of fun.

Why? Because new things are hard. New jobs, new schools, new babies, new homes, new phases of life. New things always involve change and change forces us to turn off the autopilot of daily life and really think about where we are going and what we are doing and why we are doing it. It brings up fear. Am I heading in the wrong direction? Am I going to look stupid? Am I am making a mistake?

New things force us to leave the comfort of our routine, the safety of our rut and put ourselves in a place where all kinds of things can go wrong.

And things did go wrong. My flights home were delayed and cancelled and delayed again. I had to roll with it, improvise and be patient, three things I'm not very good at doing.

But if we don't do new things we become fearful and inflexible...and before we know it, we've handicapped ourselves in a way, making it impossible to take that trip or try that class or accept that promotion or investigate that new hobby, even when we really want to.

Because that scary new thing might be wonderful. But we won't know until we trade the comfort of the couch for the discomfort of the middle seat in Economy Minus, where I always seem to end up because I have zero status on any airline.

So this trip taught me to say yes more often and "gosh, I'd really love to but..." less often.

Because I won't remember the trips I didn't take. But I will always remember the week I spent writing into the endless horizon, surrounded by the sound of the sea.

Yours Back Home Where the Coffee Is Not Served on a Silver Tray,

Christine