Pleasantly Surprised by Breaking the Silence

The other day I had dinner with one of my closest friends.  We've been friends since third grade, we love each other very much and enjoy each other's company, however we have very different ideas of travel.

She has a two-year-old child who she loves to be home with, sees Jamaica as an exotic destination, and prior to us leaving for our honeymoon to Thailand and Cambodia asked me "But what are you going to eat?  Don't they eat bugs?"

So, during our dinner we were talking about her daughter and I asked if they were thinking about #2 at all.  And of course, her follow-up question to me was...."So are you guys thinking about babies....Yet?"  "HAHAHA"  I laughed, but I decided it was time to give her the whole story and fill her in our plans. 

I told her about our trip.  I got a lot of questions and some faces that conveyed her concern for my mental stability, but overall, I got a much better response than I had construed in my head.  We talked about why we want to do this, what our thoughts were for our house, how we are going to make it work, and how other people probably won't understand. 

We talked about my fears of being judged and not understood.  She agreed that many people would not understand and might have bad things to say, but she listened to what I told her openly, and by the end of our conversation I felt that she supported me, and would honestly do her best to be excited for me even though she would never be able to understand why I would want to do something like this.

And that's all I really want or need from her or anyone else who claims they care about me.

You don't have to understand why I want to do something, but you can be interested, supportive, and excited for me.

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Distractions...and Disappointments.

The title of my post is the reason I haven't posted in quite a long time.  So to any loyal readers, (I know there are at least two), I apologize.

I've been distracted, not only from my blog, but from trip planning as well.  It's always in my mind, I'm always thinking about money and whether I really need to buy this or that or if I can put it towards our trip, but I really haven't done any research of planning in a long time, unfortunately. 

In the last month my grandpa got sick and passed away, work became very busy and stressful, I was in a good friend's wedding, and we've been gearing up for another small getaway.  These aren't excuses, but they definitely have been distractions that have taken time away from both planning and blogging.

In addition, I had a big disappointment.  I signed up for AdSense soon after starting my blog and it was so cool to actually see that I could earn a little extra money by writing!  I did not start my blog with the intention or goal of making money, but it seemed like an awesome side effect!  Then, just around the same time that my grandpa passed away, I got an email from Google that they were shutting down my AdSense account.  I was not a happy camper.  Apparently they did some research and I had "suspicious activity" and they didn't want to pay me money anymore.  I'm not proclaiming I didn't tell people about my blog and tell people that I got money if they clicked on ads, I'm just saying it sucked to have this sum of money building and motivating me and then to have it just taken away.

It's a poor excuse and I admit I contemplated completely shutting down this blog and focusing on something else.  However, I remembered that I didn't start this blog to make money, I started it to document our trip planning and hopefully help other people, as well as to get myself to commit to writing more, since it's something I enjoy doing.

So, here I am, back again.  My husband and I are taking a tropical vacation next week (I know, I know....how do we have the money to go away when we are saving for such an expensive trip?!)  This time we got one way of our flights for Christmas from my parents, and we are staying with them in their timeshare unit, so our expenses consist of a flight home, and whatever food, drinks, and recreation we partake in while we there.  Which, let's be honest, isn't that much.  Our main activities consist of sitting on a lounge chair by the pool, laying on "the wall" staring at the ocean and getting a tan, snorkeling with our own equipment, walking on the beach, running through the area in the morning.  Our splurge (which we are primarily paying for with Christmas money)?  Finally SCUBA diving in the Bahamas!  Yay!  Can't wait!

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net