A vacation is wonderful while it’s happening, but what’s also super fun is coming home and getting to sort through all the memories.

Our vacation is officially over now and we are home re-acclimating to our routines before the summer ends.

I am still unwilling to acknowledge with any enthusiasm that I start back to work in three weeks…there are still plenty of memories to be made before I reclaim my teacher title for another school year.

It’s interesting how vacation kinda changes me. Here I am at home but I feel different from before I left. And it’s not just because I had some time to relax, I saw and experienced things on this trip that changed me, relationships developed and strengthened, I am once again called to the forefront of gratitude.

And, for me, that’s evidence of a good vacation…I went out into the world and returned slightly upgraded.

It’s not really about where I go, it’s just that I need to go…and that I relinquish some authority of a known routine to find some humility in new environments with unfamiliar people in order to gain insight into a world that exists outside my well-established comfort zone.

For example, I got some curious and confused looks in women’s bathrooms on this trip…to the point where I asked Jen if she might accompany me in certain places to soften the blow on others…well, and also kinda for my own safety.

In my experience, men are generally more understanding in terms of restroom sharing, but I just don’t feel right navigating past a line of urinals with a pocket full of tampons in the men’s room on the off chance my appearance might make someone feel uncomfortable.

To clarify, I identify as a woman, but I understand how my clothing, haircut, and overall energy might shock unsuspecting women and children if they come from someplace where they don’t see a whole lotta women who look like me.

I used to be offended and hurt by it. And I did have an old moment of feeling like the creature from Frankenstein when two little girls stopped with surprise entering the Area 15 bathroom as I was walking out and their mom put a protective and hesitant arm around them.

It’s cool. I just prefer not to be shanked in conservative Utah over a misunderstanding about my gender identity.

But it’s a good reminder. And an opportunity to continue confidently living in the world as my authentic self, in peace and kindness. It is not my job to change my appearance for others, but I can certainly make an effort to meet people where they’re at…maybe they’ll associate a positive experience with the next person who looks like me, maybe they’ll be less shocked and afraid.

I was also reminded on this trip about my relationship with nature. I spent 16 years living almost exclusively in an urban setting and seeing nature from paved paths under intentionally planted trees.

I loved nature when I was a kid. I spent most of my days exploring outside. And then it went dormant in the effort to become a streetwise city mouse. Put me in any city in the world and I’ll find my way around…but put me in nature these days and I stutter with self-doubt.

It was really empowering to be once again dwarfed by god-planted trees and rocks, reminded that my existence is small and relatively insignificant in this big big world where rivers form canyons over millions of years and who the fuck am I to think my silly little life could make much of an impact, limited by a tiny ripple of this hundred year lifespan?

It puts things in perspective. Sometimes my life-things feel so big and important…then I find myself walking through a river shadowed by these huge canyon walls and realize this shit has been flowing since way before me and it’ll keep doing its thing well after I’m gone.

It restores my belief that we are all here to contribute to this big ass world in a very small way. And we get to choose how big or small we feel in it. we get to choose what’s important to us and where we put our energy.

But a grain of sand is just a speckle of evidence that there once existed an enormous rock, a leaf grows on a tree and then dries and falls to become mulch for the forest floor, a fish swims around until it’s big enough to be spotted and scooped up by a pelican…sometimes our purpose is simply to keep living and existing and being as we are, sometimes it’s more to do with how we feed something else than it is about feeding ourselves.

And when I think about being stuck in that elevator in Vegas, I consider how I contributed to the whole unfolding of the situation. I wasn’t the one who jumped. My actions didn’t cause the elevator to stop. But how I chose to exist in that elevator after it stopped absolutely speaks to my purpose in this big big world. I maintained peace. I didn’t harbor resentment or blame, it didn’t matter who’s fault it was, all that mattered was that the two people in there with me who were feeling tremendous guilt and shame and remorse knew that they were loved and that we were all gonna be okay.

When we got off the elevator, the manager called me to the carpet to answer for it. He spoke to me as though I was the one responsible and I was the one who should be ashamed because I was guilty. And I don’t know if thats because the room reservation was in my name or because I just look more guilty and capable of committing crimes than Jen or the kiddo, but being scolded by him tripped a faulty wire in me….

And then I did something I am ashamed of: I told him, “I’m gonna stop you right there, sir, because I wasn’t the one who jumped.”

Because in that moment I was reliving all the times I’ve been accused of something I didn’t do, all the times I’ve experienced injustice, all the times I’ve been served punishment without feeling I’d done anything wrong, the times nobody believed me and nobody spoke up for me.

And, with that one statement, I realized I’d unwillingly thrown Jen and the kiddo under the bus.

My inner-Jersey was so disappointed…it’s supposed to be loyalty to family above everything else. I sold them out on a trigger to save nothing more than my own stupid pride. We still had to pay the fine, we still had to take responsibility, and Jen of course stepped up and said it was her and the kiddo, but it doesn’t change the fact that if I had it to do over again, I woulda just kept my mouth shut.

I still have work to do…these stupid triggers. But it was a really important moment…there were so many really important moments where I had a choice. Knowing that helps me to remember that every single time I speak or write or act, I am making my contribution, the way the river shapes the canyon, the way the fish feeds the pelican, the way a leaf pads the forest floor.

And the more I get out into the world and practice, the more effective I become at doing my tiny part to shape the world around me. I’m already thinking about where I’d like to go next.