Travel's Lessons

Four weeks ago, I'd have been getting in the car for my drive to Savannah for the accreditation conference.  I had spent the weeks leading up to the trip feeling a bit of anxiety and not being sure exactly why--or knowing why and not having much control over these feelings.

I am always happy to have made the trip once I'm back--well, almost always.  I'm surprised that the thought of traveling makes me so anxious.  What happened to that young woman who used to declare that she'd be just fine as long as she could throw her pillow, her running shoes, and a good book in the car?

That woman is decades older now and understands all that can go wrong.  That woman now worries about the humans and the work left behind.  That woman now longs to be several places at once.

I have these ideas of traveling on the mind in part because I will be traveling next week:  it's AWP time, and I decided that I needed to force myself to go.  I'm moving out of my comfort zone with this trip across the country to Portland, Oregon.  I will be meeting a grad school friend there, so I won't be completely alone.  And I have resources.  But it's not like last year, when the conference was in Tampa.  If something went wrong, I wasn't that far from home.

But things likely won't go wrong.  And if they do, I'll figure out what to do.  These lessons are some of the more important ones that traveling teaches us.

Now for the tasks of this week:  it's the last week of Winter quarter.  I have accreditation documents to finish.  Let me begin all of this with my bread run to Publix.  Students still need bread and treats, no matter where we are in the quarter.