Writing This From Puerto Rico

I’m writing this from Puerto Rico, and I already know that one day I will probably read these words again and remember exactly what this part of our journey felt like. Maybe I’ll be sitting somewhere with Jay, maybe we’ll have a family of our own, and we’ll look back at the time when we were young, travelling from place to place and trying to figure out what we actually wanted our lives to look like. I like the thought of that. Not just having photos and videos to look back on, but having these little pieces of our thoughts from the moments when they were actually happening.

There is something strange about travelling while knowing that you are creating memories you will probably miss one day. When you’re in the middle of it, you’re not always thinking about how special it is. Sometimes you’re tired, sometimes you’re worried about money, sometimes you’re trying to figure out where you’re sleeping the next night or what you’re going to do next. But then there are moments when you stop and realize that this is actually your life. This is the life you once imagined while sitting at home, wondering what it would be like to see the world. And I think that is one of the reasons I wanted to start writing these blogposts in the first place. I don’t want this journey to only exist as a collection of destinations, photos and videos. I want to remember what we were thinking, what we were learning and how travelling was actually changing the way we looked at our lives.

For a long time, I thought the normal version of adulthood was pretty much already decided for you. You work, you build a career, you find a partner, you start a family, you buy a house or a townhouse, you get to know your neighbours a little too well, and eventually you spend most of your time waiting for the weekend, your next holiday or summer vacation. There is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting that life. For many people, it is exactly what makes them happy. But I started wondering why we so often treat it as if it is the only version of a successful life. Why does wanting something different sometimes sound irresponsible, unrealistic or even selfish?

I know how fortunate we are to be able to make a choice like this. Not everyone has the opportunity to leave their job, travel for an extended period of time and experience different countries and cultures. We don’t take that for granted. In fact, the more we travel, the more aware we become of how much of the world we still don’t understand. We are guests in every place we visit, and there is something incredibly humbling about that. You start realizing that the way you grew up, the things you were taught and even the things you thought were completely normal are only one small perspective in a much bigger world.

That is also what I want this blog to be about. Of course, we will share where we go and what we do. There will be travel stories, places we loved, things that didn’t go as planned and probably a lot of mistakes along the way. But I don’t want this website to become just another list of destinations or a highlight reel of our lives. I want to share the thoughts behind the places we visit and the things travelling makes us question. The conversations we have, the people we meet, the assumptions we realize were wrong and the lessons we take with us when we leave. Because for us, travelling isn’t just about seeing more of the world. It is about understanding it a little better, while also understanding ourselves a little better.

So, as I sit here in Puerto Rico writing this, I don’t know what our lives will look like when we eventually read this again. Maybe we’ll be living somewhere completely different. Maybe we’ll have children sitting next to us asking about the places in these stories. Maybe we’ll laugh at the things we worried about or wonder how we ever managed to travel with so little planning. But I hope we never forget what it felt like to be here, at this point in our lives, knowing that there was still so much ahead of us.

And maybe that’s the real reason I’m writing all of this down.

Not just so you can follow our journey, but so that one day, we can too.

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Written by Fabienne, Puerto Rico