It’s 2 pm in Dublin, 6am in San Diego, and I’ll be spending today somewhere in the haze of a 5,000 mile journey from where I’ve been to where I am now.

There’s a song about resilience by Mac Miller called “Jet Fuel” that’s been in my head since I woke up. I listened to it a lot in my darker days, inspired to persevere and keep using my fiercest and most premium fuel to get to the next place.

I’ve often noticed that when you ask someone to tell you about their hometown, their face will soften and you get an authentic sense of their roots, their childhood, their history. And similarly, when you ask someone about a favorite vacation, a special place they’ve visited, their face will light up, and the details they share will enlighten you about their passion, their sense of adventure, where they find meaning, and how they experience the world.

Many moons ago, on our second date, my sweetie invited me over to her house to sit on the front porch by the fire pit and get to know each other a little better. She brought out her travel journal from the time she went to Europe as a teenager…and she shared her photos and her writings from that once-in-a-lifetime trip. And, as she spoke of her visit to Pompeii, I was moved by how powerfully she was transported back to that visceral space…this city, not haunted, not conquered, but frozen in time…it was there one day and then the next, it wasn’t.

And what stood out to me as important to pay attention to so early on in knowing her was that, in my writing, I’d been referring to the sudden collapse of the chapter of my life formally known as my marriage in terms of Pompeii, a place I’d never been…there one day and then the next, it wasn’t. And here she was, this new person with new and yet familiar energy, talking about Pompeii like it was a frozen church…and the contrast to my association with it being an ashen wasteland.

This is why traveling is so important…for sharing stories, for perspective, for stirring the parts of us that are quiet in our sometimes mundane daily lives.

I do not consider myself much of a travel writer. I have sat before through dozens of narrated slideshows of other people’s adventures to fun places in an effort to vicariously glean some of the magic they experienced. And, as I reviewed the previous posts of our daily experiences in Ireland this past week, I found myself sad that I haven’t ever written more while I’ve been traveling.

I finished writing my Day 5 post about Glendalough from the nook of Kehoe’s pub on our last day in Dublin while my sweetie was procuring cheese. And I had a thought this morning about getting a few minutes to do that…about all the times I’ve visited places because some writer used to go there…Pete’s Tavern in NYC, where O. Henry wrote “The Gift of the Magi”, The White Horse Tavern one of Dylan Thomas’ old haunts, Sloppy Joe’s where Hemingway spent his nights in Key West, The Gold Hill Saloon in Virginia City where Mark Twain hung out before they booted him outta town.

I had a list of Dublin pubs to visit where Joyce and Yeats and Wilde and Shaw hung out (Jonathan Swift was kind of a stick in the mud about imbibing), but there just wasn’t enough time with all the other stuff we were called to experience on this trip.

But my thought was more of a wondering about if maybe someday I became a somebody too. Which places someone would want to visit if they wanted to know about the essence of me…where someone would go to sit in the same sauce I sat in. If I sat in a space and wrote a manuscript that touched into the heart of the human spirit, someone someday might visit that space. Who knows? But what a fun thought…what a reminder to keep going out into the world every day with intention to do the next thing that feels right.

We were awake for a full 24 hours traveling home. Coffees and pastries in the courtyard at Dublin Castle before the taxi came to pick us up. Security lines, bought a ton of “drinkable souvenirs” in the duty free to bring back to our village. Customs is still a little nerve wracking, even though we promised we weren’t bringing back shamrock plants or that delicious cheese, however tempting it was.

We decided not to sleep on the plane so we’d be ripe for sleep when we got home…I watched a new movie, The Banshees of Inisherin, set in Ireland, so I was like, I’ve been there. And now, of course, I have plenty of processing to do because it was uncomfortable and made me think about shit.

We had a 5 HOUR layover in Dallas, which was a challenge to rally through…delirium set in, my eyes kept closing involuntarily, and I had a few moments where I consciously asked the universe to find a way to ensure we would actually get on the plane. And we did. And we napped uncomfortably sitting upright while people around us coughed and sneezed…completely indifferent in our exhaustion to caring for a moment about picking up Covid or other infectious diseases on the plane…just sleep now, we’ll beef up on antioxidants and supplements once we land.

This is a wonderful feeling this morning…not the jet lag, but the smell of jet fuel still on my skin…and how that somehow magnifies the even more delicious smell of our home greeting us the second we opened the front door last night with our suitcases. The reminder of our wonderful life and this beautiful space we get to live in, the fragrant wood, the always faint aroma of fireplace and incense, the sentimental scent of our old books and vintage furniture, and even the smell of our dogs, who wagged their tails happily when they realized we’d returned home from our journey.

Using our jet fuel, burning through all that we have in the tank generously, as we practice truly living in every single moment from one place to the next, I don’t think it’s meant to be stored and saved. I’m glad we didn’t spend more time in our hotel room. I’m happy we pushed through all the excuses we could’ve made about being exhausted or wanting to have some “down time”.

We did this one right. And have agreed to bring this spirit home with us, to have local adventures as often as possible until we find inspiration for our next plane ride. But there’s something even more special about traveling, that with it comes a greater sense of appreciation for the brilliance we so often take for granted at home.