WHY I KEEP TAKING THE TRIP

I lost my mom when I was thirty-seven. I think that was one of the first times in my life I truly realized that I was getting older—and that time wasn’t going to wait for me.

My love of travel started much earlier. When I was nineteen, I spent the summer in Schweinfurt, Germany working on a U.S. Army base. It was my first real taste of being somewhere completely different from home, and something about that experience stuck with me. I wanted to see more, experience more, and find out what else was out there.

Then life happened. School, work, marriage, kids, bills, schedules—all the things that fill up the years before you even realize how quickly they’re passing.

Don't get me wrong—I loved that life. I still do. I wasn't sitting around wishing I were somewhere else. But losing my mom made me think differently about all those things I kept assuming I'd have time to do someday.

So, shortly after she died, I decided that for my 40th birthday I was going back to Germany—to the place where my love of travel had started more than twenty years earlier.

And I did.

Since then, I've been fortunate enough to see some pretty amazing places, and somewhere along the way I made a conscious decision to make travel a priority again.

That doesn't mean it's always easy. There are still kids, jobs, schedules, responsibilities, and definitely budgets. Sometimes the trip I want to take simply isn't possible. Sometimes it has to wait. Sometimes I have to save longer, spend less, change the plan, or choose somewhere closer to home.

But I've stopped assuming there will always be a better time later.

If I can make the trip happen, I want to take it. I want to see the places I've wondered about, experience things I've never done before, take way too many pictures, and come home with another story to tell.

If losing my mom taught me anything, it's that time is incredibly valuable—and I don't want to spend mine always saying, “Someday.”

If I can take the trip, I'm going to take it.